A dilatometer measures volume changes in fluids or solids due to temperature, chemical reactions, fluid absorption, or physical stress. Types include flat plate, rod, laser, and optical dilatometers. They can be simple, like a mercury thermometer, or complex, like modern laser dilatometers.
A dilatometer is a scientific device used to measure volume changes that occur in fluids or solids. The types of volume changes that are usually measured using dilatometry include volume changes due to temperature fluctuations, chemical reactions, fluid absorption, or physical stress such as pressure on a solid substance. Many dilatometers are very complex scientific instruments, but there are also some simple types of dilatometers. An example of a simple device is a mercury thermometer. As mercury heats up, it expands and it is this increase in volume that is measured by the scale of a mercury thermometer.
Some different types of dilatometers include the flat plate dilatometer, rod dilatometer, and more advanced modern laser and optical dilatometers. Flat plate dilatometers, sometimes also called capacity dilatometers, are characterized by having two plates, one fixed and the other mobile. This type of instrument is often used to measure volume changes in solid materials. A long thin piece of the material to be measured is inserted into the device. When it expands, for example, if the temperature rises, the expansion pushes the movable plate. The mobile plate can be connected to a computer capable of measuring even small movements.
Rod strainers, sometimes also called rod strainers, are typically used to measure the expansion of a material when it is heated. In this type of device, the volume change of the specimen is measured relative to the rod inside the instrument. This rod is a control specimen with a known coefficient of expansion and comparison of the specimen to the rod allows the user to calculate the expansion of the specimen subjected to the dilatometer test.
Dilatometer testing with modern laser or optical devices can be extremely sensitive and measure small changes in volume. Some laser dilatometers, for example, work by repeatedly passing a laser beam over the object under test, and a laser receptor measures minute changes in the diameter of the resulting shadow. An optical dilatometer typically uses a sensitive digital camera to record small changes in the size of an object or substance. This has the added benefit of being a non-contact system that can be used for objects or substances that need to be measured without being physically handled.
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