Abstract
Measurements are frequently taken with little or no regard for the uncertainties or errors of those measurements, which may lead to incorrect conclusions and decisions. Professional societies today, including ASME, are becoming more and more concerned with measurement uncertainty. This paper is developed in full support of that concern. This paper discusses the value of an uncertainty analysis,discusses how to determine measurement uncertainty, and then details the sources of error in instrument calibration, data acquisition, and data reduction for a particular experiment. Methods are discussed to determine both the systematic (or bias) error in an experiment as well as to determine the random (or precision) error in the experiment. The detailed analysis is applied to two sets ofconditions in measuring the effectiveness of an immersed coil heat exchanger. It shows the value of such analysis as well as an approach to reduce overall measurement uncertainty and to improve the experiment. This paper outlines how to perform an uncertainty analysis and then provides a detailed example of how to apply the methods discussed in the paper. The authors hope this paper willencourage researchers and others to become more concerned with their measurement processes and to report measurement uncertainty with all of their test results.
Original language | American English |
---|---|
Number of pages | 8 |
State | Published - 1986 |
NREL Publication Number
- NREL/TP-253-2862
Keywords
- experimental error
- measurement bias
- uncertainty analysis