Ammeter

"Amperemeter" redirects here. For the unit of measurement, see Ampere-meter.

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Demonstration model of a moving iron ammeter. As the current through the coil increases, the plunger is drawn further into the coil and the pointer deflects to the right.

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Wire carrying current to be measured.
Spring providing restoring force This illustration is conceptual; in a practical meter, the iron core is stationary, and front and rear spiral springs carry current to the coil, which is supported on a rectangular bobbin. Furthermore, the poles of the permanent magnet are arcs of a circle.

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Ammeter from the old Penn Station Terminal Service Plant in New York City

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Zero-center ammeter

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An older moving iron ammeter with its characteristic non-linear scale and with the moving iron ammeter symbol mounted on a small form factor PC.

An ammeter is a measuring instrument used to measure the electric current in a circuit. Electric currents are measured in amperes (A), hence the name. Instruments used to measure smaller currents, in the milliampere or microampere range, are designated as milliammeters or microammeters. Early ammeters were laboratory instruments which relied on the Earth's magnetic field for operation. By the late 19th century, improved instruments were designed which could be mounted in any position and allowed accurate measurements in electric power systems.

History

The relation between electric current, magnetic fields and physical forces was first noted by Hans Christian Ørsted who, in 1820, observed a compass needle was deflected from pointing North when a current flowed in an adjacent wire. The tangent galvanometer was used to measure currents using this effect, where the restoring force returning the pointer to the zero position was provided by the Earth's magnetic field. This made these instruments usable only when aligned with the Earth's field. Sensitivity of the instrument was increased by using additional turns of wire to multiply the effect – the instruments were called "multipliers".

Types

The D'Arsonval galvanometer is a moving coil ammeter. It uses magnetic deflection, where current passing through a coil causes the coil to move in a magnetic field. The modern form of this instrument was developed by Edward Weston, and uses two spiral springs to provide the restoring force. By maintaining a uniform air gap between the iron core of the instrument and the poles of its permanent magnet, the instrument has good linearity and accuracy. Basic meter movements can have full-scale deflection for currents from about 25 microamperes to 10 milliamperes and have linear scales.

Moving iron ammeters use a piece of iron which moves when acted upon by the electromagnetic force of a fixed coil of wire. This type of meter responds to both direct and alternating currents (as opposed to the moving coil ammeter, which works on direct current only). The iron element consists of a moving vane attached to a pointer, and a fixed vane, surrounded by a coil. As alternating or direct current flows through the coil and induces a magnetic field in both vanes, the vanes repel each other and the moving vane deflects against the restoring force provided by fine helical springs. The non-linear scale of these meters makes them unpopular.

An electrodynamic movement uses an electromagnet instead of the permanent magnet of the d'Arsonval movement. This instrument can respond to both alternating and direct current.

In a hot-wire ammeter, a current passes through a wire which expands as it heats. Although these instruments have slow response time and low accuracy, they were sometimes used in measuring radio-frequency current.

Digital ammeter designs use an analog to digital converter (ADC) to measure the voltage across the shunt resistor; the digital display is calibrated to read the current through the shunt.

There is also a whole range of devices referred to as integrating ammeters. In these ammeters the amount of current is summed over time giving as a result the product of current and time, which is proportional to the energy transferred with that current. These can be used for energy meters (watt-hour meters) or for estimating the charge of battery or capacitor.

Picoammeter

A picoammeter, or pico ammeter, measures very low electrical current, usually from the picoampere range at the lower end to the milliampere range at the upper end. Picoammeters are used for sensitive measurements where the current being measured is below the theoretical limits of sensitivity of other devices, such as Multimeters.

Most picoammeters use a "virtual short" technique and have several different measurement ranges that must be switched between to cover multiple decades of measurement. Other modern picoammeters use log compression and a "current sink" method that eliminates range switching and associated voltage spikes.

Application

The majority of ammeters are either connected in series with the circuit carrying the current to be measured (for small fractional amperes), or have their shunt resistors connected similarly in series. In either case, the current passes through the meter or (mostly) through its shunt. They must not be connected to a source of voltage; they are designed for minimal burden, which refers to the voltage drop across the ammeter, which is typically a small fraction of a volt. They are almost a short circuit.

Ordinary Weston-type meter movements can measure only milliamperes at most, because the springs and practical coils can carry only limited currents. To measure larger currents, a resistor called a shunt is placed in parallel with the meter. The resistances of shunts is in the integer to fractional milliohm range. Nearly all of the current flows through the shunt, and only a small fraction flows through the meter. This allows the meter to measure large currents. Traditionally, the meter used with a shunt has a full-scale deflection (FSD) of 50 mV, so shunts are typically designed to produce a voltage drop of 50 mV when carrying their full rated current.

Zero-center ammeters are used for applications requiring current to be measured with both polarities, common in scientific and industrial equipment. Zero-center ammeters are also commonly placed in series with a battery. In this application, the charging of the battery deflects the needle to one side of the scale (commonly, the right side) and the discharging of the battery deflects the needle to the other side. A special type of zero-center ammeter for testing high currents in cars and trucks has a pivoted bar magnet that moves the pointer, and a fixed bar magnet to keep the pointer centered with no current. The magnetic field around the wire carrying current to be measured deflects the moving magnet.

Since the ammeter shunt has a very low resistance, mistakenly wiring the ammeter in parallel with a voltage source will cause a short circuit, at best blowing a fuse, possibly damaging the instrument and wiring, and exposing an observer to injury.

In AC circuits, a current transformer converts the magnetic field around a conductor into a small AC current, typically either 1 A or 5 A at full rated current, that can be easily read by a meter. In a similar way, accurate AC/DC non-contact ammeters have been constructed using Hall effect magnetic field sensors. A portable hand-held clamp-on ammeter is a common tool for maintenance of industrial and commercial electrical equipment, which is temporarily clipped over a wire to measure current. Some recent types have a parallel pair of magnetically-soft probes that are placed on either side of the conductor.

See also

• Clamp meter
• Electric circuit
• Electrical measurements
• Electronics
• List of electronics topics
• Multimeter
• Ohmmeter
• Rheoscope
• Voltmeter
• Class of accuracy in electrical measurements

References

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