Physics

[emmagift97]

Hello guys. I am still learning labview so I want to make a code or program that measures water level in a dam using a capacitor.

Your help will be highly appreciated 

[altenbach]

There is no water in the dam, just in the lake behind it. 😄

What is the capacitor supposed to sense and where is it located?

[cbutcher]

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@altenbach wrote:

There is no water in the dam, just in the lake behind it. 😄

What is the capacitor supposed to sense and where is it located?

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The capacitor is in the dam, and it's supposed to sense the water leaking into the cavities between bricks... 🙂

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

In dam terms, one could think of a capacitor as a 'reservoir' of charge.

Then again, using a capacitor one could build a 'low pass' filter as it applies to dam terminology. Unless the bypass gates are open, then it would be a 'high pass' filter.

Sorry for the play on words, it's been one heck of a long dam day...

-AK2DM

[altenbach]

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@AnalogKid2DigitalMan wrote:

Sorry for the play on words, it's been one heck of a long dam day...

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[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

I've been on that dam tour a couple of times when I lived in Vegas. Very impressive!

Back in 83/84 when they were letting water through the bypass chutes the area was covered in green algae due to all the mist in the air.

-AK2DM

[Henrik_Volkers]

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@cbutcher wrote:

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@altenbach wrote:

There is no water in the dam, just in the lake behind it. 😄

What is the capacitor supposed to sense and where is it located?

---

The capacitor is in the dam, and it's supposed to sense the water leaking into the cavities between bricks... 🙂

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LabVIEW wouldn't be able to measure the capacity or the water level, but it's easy to process values you measured with some additional hardware 😉

What you want is called an impedance measurement.  A nice way to measure small impedance changes is an AC bridge.

Another simple way: build an RC oscillator (using the famous 555 or ....) or an LC oscillator    and measure the change in frequency. If the frequency is below 20 kHz you can use your soundcard line/mic  in ...

Capacitive water level measurement is tricky about the elektrodes.  I once read a solution by using two 'plastic' water pipes of different diameter ( not complete platic, just what you get in the home depot for water supply: it's a compound with an inner aluminium pipe , bud nicely isolated. NO CORROSION! but isolate the lower ends 😉 )  and build a coaxial capacitor.

Place the (RC/555) sensing electronic directly on top of that coaxial capacitor couple the AC on your supply .. and you only need two wires (best twisted pair) to sense the level over long distance.

However monitoring a dam migth involve some risc accessments ... guess why qualified sensors cost that much...