Newswise — The presentation of the Measurement Science and Technology Outstanding Paper Award (Sensors and Sensing Systems) 2005 was made by Dr Tom Barton, Director of the Ames Laboratory to Dr Nicola Bowler (http://www.public.iastate.edu/~nbowler/homepage.html) of Iowa State University (http://www.iastate.edu/).
The photograph shows Dr Bowler receiving the award at the Ames Laboratory's annual awards luncheon. Ames Laboratory (http://www.ameslab.gov/) was established in 1947 following work to produce purified uranium for the Manhattan Project. Ames Laboratory is operated by Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.
The winning article "Electrical conductivity measurement of metal plates using broadband eddy-current and four-point methods" by Nicola Bowler and Yongqiang Huang (Iowa State University, USA), was published in issue 11, volume 16, 2193-2200 and in making their recommendation the sensors and sensing systems science working group chaired by Professor Paul Regtien gave the following endorsement:
The paper addresses two methods to measure the electrical conductivity of metal plates of various materials. In particular for ferromagnetic plates, traditional methods show relative large measurement uncertainties. In this paper, the origins of these large inaccuracies are studied, and two alternative methods are presented that yield much better accuracies. Both methods: a broadband eddy-current and a four-point contact scheme, are extensively analysed theoretically as well as experimentally. The results are compared with other published data, for plates of brass, stainless steel and spring steel. An uncertainty analysis reveals the superiority of the newly introduced methods in case of steel. The four-point method has the advantage of being easy to use.
The paper is well-structured, with a good balance between theory and experiments, and a clear presentation of the measurement data and associated uncertainties, both in tables and graphs. The paper concludes with a convincing discussion and outlook for further research. The results are of great value in the field of non-destructive testing.
This article is freely available from the featured articles list on the journal homepage. More information about the outstanding paper awards in Measurement Science and Technology can be found here (http://www.iop.org/EJ/news/-topic=1116/journal/-page=about/0957-0233/1).
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