Tuesday, 6 March 2018

current - 4-terminal shunt resistor



What is the importance of a 4-terminal shunt resistor? What is real purpose behind using two seperate terminal for the voltage measurement across the shunt resistor?



Answer



Take a look at this. It shows two terminals as the main current flow (thick tracks) and uses 2 more terminals for measurement of the volt drop generated by that current: -


enter image description here


The "better" way is on the left because it takes measurement connections from a defined place and at no point on those measurement connections is there load current flowing.


The picture on the right shows the measurement connections at some small distance from the shunt resistor terminals and therefore there is a small volt drop that forms an error - in effect you can't rely on the stated value of the shunt resistor in order to convert the measured voltage to an assumed current flow.


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