Design of thermal expansion measurement system based on virtual instrument

System architecture is presented for an automatic measurement of thermal expansion. The dynamic measurement of the temperature and thermal expansion displacement of the material is carried out through the application of Labview. The expansion and temperature of material is stored and displayed in real-time. Then the thermal expansion coefficient can be obtained. The measurement system composes of SIOS-SP120D laser interferometer, high vacuum furnace, rbh8223h data acquisition card, rbhS104 conditioning board, constant computer power supply. The USB interface is adopted to collect the temperature and displacement data. Experimental results show that the system has high measurement accuracy and good man-machine interface properties.