In the paper an approach to assess the virtual instruments measurement uncertainties is presented. It is a theoretical method, which strictly follows the procedures of the “ISO-Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement”. By means of this method, the combined standard uncertainty of the measurement result is obtained starting from the standard uncertainties generated by each single source and then trough the standard uncertainty of each acquired sample. To avoid calculating the correlation coefficients, which often is a time consuming and hard task, in the proposed method there are some approximations. The results obtained by means of this approximated theoretical analysis are compared with the ones obtained by means of experimental tests. The good agreement between these results, justifies the approximations of the proposed method.

In this paper the results of a measurement campaign aimed at investigating electromagnetic emissions in sliding contacts are presented. Different experimental setups have been used for the investigation and, in particular, a short section of overhead line and a full-scale pantograph have been assembled in a shielded chamber. We have aimed at the characterization of the main parameters determining the radiated emissions and at a better understanding of the role of the arc in creating such radiated fields. The most relevant result of our campaign is the practically negligible contribution of the arc to the total emission of the circuit.

Fiber optic Bragg gratings have found increasing applications to seismic strain measurement of underground structures and rock mass. The strain sensitivity of a Bragg grating measuring system, however, is limited by the noise caused by the instability of the laser wavelength and the rough measurement surroundings. Signal processing and noise reduction plays therefore an important role in the strain measurement using fiber Bragg gratings. In this paper discrete autocorrelation function and iterative smoothing are applied to the improvement of the signal to noise ratio and the detectability of seismic signals in underground rock mass. Results from laboratory and field experiments are given to show the noise reduction and detectability improvements.

Focused on the interpretation of space charge evolution in paper materials, the article tries to identify some parameters derived from PEA measurements, able to be correlated with the chemical structure of these peculiar insulating materials (herein the mineral content), as a first step towards quality analysis of the manufacturing process.

The paper illustrates more than 30 years of author's experience as a measureman in the field of pressure measurements, both for industry and/or for environment. In a world where engineering acquires more and more complexity as a science, going beyond strictly specialized fields, the application of mechatronic principles results in the optimum utilization of materials in their elastic limits and ingenious association of tensometric sensors and corresponding electronics, in order to achieve high sensitivity transducers with multiple applications.