What is a Load Cell? Load Cells How It Works?

What is a Load Cell? Load Cells How It Works?

Geotechnical instrumentation and monitoring is a vast field and it encompasses several sensors that aid in structural health monitoring, landslide monitoring, excavation monitoring, etc.

Load cells are one such instrument that are commonly used to measure weight. They can measure things as small as a needle to as heavy as big drilling machines. You can find load cells everywhere, even in your nearby grocery stores to weigh your items, though, they are inside the instruments.

Load cells are available in different shapes, types, and sizes. If you’re curious about what a load cell is and how it works, keep reading to be enlightened.

Let us discuss more about them along with their types, working principle, advantages, and much more.

What is a Load Cell?
A load cell is a transducer that converts the mechanical force into readable electrical units, similar to our regular weighing scales. Their main purpose is to weigh or check the amount of load transferred.

The load cell sensors are always bonded along with elastic material, known as strain gauges.

To understand more on them, it is necessary that you must know about strain gauges, their types, working principle, as well as, areas of application.

What is load cell used for?
The type of instruments used in the geotechnical field depends on the scope of work. Load cells can be used at the initial stage i.e. during the research and development or even at a later stage while monitoring a structure.

Geotechnical instruments are used both pre and post-construction to ensure the safety of structures, dams, tunnels, bridges etc. Proper geotechnical monitoring ensures the long-term safety of these structures.

Load cells find their application in the geotechnical field and, they are commonly used to monitor:

Deep foundations: excavation bracing like struts, soldier pile; tiebacks or anchors; retaining walls
Tunnels and shafts: Steel liner plate, cast-in-place concrete, segmented precast concrete, shotcrete
Dams: Concrete Dams, Underground Power House
Piles: Pile load test

What is the working principle of a load cell?
If you’ve ever wondered how load cell sensors work, here’s your answer!.
Load cell principle involves the use of many specific geotechnical instruments.It can’t work without being paired up with sensors, one of them being Strain Gauges.

Strain Gauges are thin elastic materials made up of stainless steel and are fixed inside the load cells using proprietary adhesives. The strain gauge has a specific resistance that is directly proportional to its length and width.

When a force is applied on the load cell, it bends or stretches causing the strain gauge to move with it. And, when the length and cross-section of the strain gauge changes, its electrical resistivity also gets altered, thereby changing the output voltage.

There is another concept involved with the working principle of load cells. Let’s have a look aset it.