Experimentation, Validation, and Uncertainty Analysis for Engineers, 4th Edition

1EXPERIMENTATION, ERRORS, AND UNCERTAINTY

When the word experimentation is encountered, most of us immediately envision someone in a laboratory “taking data.” This idea has been fostered over many decades by portrayals in periodicals, television shows, and movies of an engineer or scientist in a white lab coat writing on a clipboard while surrounded by the piping and gauges in a refinery or by an impressive complexity of laboratory glassware. In recent years, the location is often a control room filled with computerized data acquisition equipment with lights blinking on the racks and panels. To some extent, the manner in which laboratory classes are typically implemented in university curricula also reinforces this idea. Students often encounter most instruction in experimentation as demonstration experiments that are already set up when the students walk into the laboratory. Data are often taken under the pressure of time, and much of the interpretation of the data and the reporting of results is spent on trying to rationalize what went wrong and what the results “would have shown if…”

Experimentation is not just data taking. Any engineer or scientist who subscribes to the widely held but erroneous belief that experimentation is making measurements in the laboratory will be a failure as an experimentalist. The actual data-taking portion of a well-run experimental program generally constitutes a small percentage of the total time and effort expended. In this book we examine ...