45367 Question 1 [25 marks] An engineer is part of a team installing a new statue in Liverpool city centre. They have chosen to use a series of hollow cylinder load

cells to measure the force being applied to the statue's base. The load of the statue is 3.14 kN. (a) With the aid of diagrams, explain how a hollow cylinder load cell works. [6 marks] (b) What are the advantages to using a Wheatstone bridge circuit with four active strain gauges? [4 marks] Load Cell 1 2 3 4 5 6 (c) Explain what random errors are and state THREE possible causes of random errors in this experimental setup. [5 marks] (d) There are eight hollow cylinder load cells within the statue's base. If the force acting on the base is equally distributed, the 3.14 kN of force will be split equally between the eight load cells. The following data was obtained for each load cell by taking the average of 50 measurements. 7 8 orth Average Force Measured (N) 406 385 391 379 402 392 371 398 Determine if the force is being distributed equally and justify your answer. [10 marks]