Improving the Response of a Load Cell by Using Optimal Filtering

Abstract: Load cells are transducers used to measure force or weight. Despite the fact thatthere is a wide variety of load cells, most of these transducers that are used in the weighingindustry are based on strain gauges. In this paper, an s-beam load cell based on strain gaugeswas suitably assembled to the mechanical structure of several seats of a bus underperformance tests and used to measure the resistance of their mechanical structure to tensionforces applied horizontally to the seats being tested. The load cell was buried in a broad-band noise background where the unwanted information and the relevant signal sometimesshare a very similar frequency spectrum and its performance was improved by using arecursive least-squares (RLS) lattice algorithm. The experimental results are satisfactoryand a significant improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio at the system output of 27 dB wasachieved, which is a good performance factor for judging the quality of the system.