A New Approach for Non Contact Measuring of Tension in Fixed and Moving Wires

In this paper, a non contact method for measuring instantaneous tension in a wire, based on equations of lateral vibrations of wires, is introduced. The lateral vibration of the string is measured using an eddy current transducer and is sent to a computer. This signal is then imported to a suitable software for fast Fourier transform (FFT) processing. The first natural frequency of the string is calculated online using FFT plot of the imported signal. This proposed method can be used for measuring tension for both fixed and moving wires with constant velocity, which is a usual case in wire processing. Results show good agreement with theoretical estimations and errors measured are less than 8% at the worst case. This experimental study introduces a simple and low cost method which can be implemented in existing non-contact wire measuring tension apparatus.