High voltage ohmmeters


Posted on Feb 7, 2014

Most ohmmeters of the design shown in the previous section utilize a battery of relatively low voltage, usually nine volts or less. This is perfectly adequate for measuring resistances under several mega-ohms (M ©), but when extremely high resistances need to be measured, a 9 volt battery is insufficient for generating enough current to actuate an electromechanical


High voltage ohmmeters
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meter movement. Also, as discussed in an earlier chapter, resistance is not always a stable (linear) quantity. This is especially true of non-metals. Recall the graph of current over voltage for a small air gap (less than an inch): While this is an extreme example of nonlinear conduction, other substances exhibit similar insulating/conducting properties when exposed to high voltages. Obviously, an ohmmeter using a low-voltage battery as a source of power cannot measure resistance at the ionization potential of a gas, or at the breakdown voltage of an insulator. If such resistance values need to be measured, nothing but a high-voltage ohmmeter will suffice. The most direct method of high-voltage resistance measurement involves simply substituting a higher voltage battery in the same basic design of ohmmeter investigated earlier: Knowing, however, that the resistance of some materials tends to change with applied voltage, it would be advantageous to be able to adjust the voltage of this ohmmeter to obtain resistance measurements under different conditions: Unfortunately, this would create a calibration problem for the meter. If the meter movement deflects full-scale with a certain amount of current through it, the full-scale range of the meter in ohms would change as the source voltage changed. Imagine connecting a stable resistance across the test leads of this ohmmeter while varying the source voltage: as the voltage is...




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