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

6DETAILED UNCERTAINTY ANALYSIS: DETERMINING SYSTEMATIC UNCERTAINTIES IN RESULTS

In all of our discussions of systematic uncertainty we assume that corrections have been made for all of the systematic errors whose values are known, such as those determined by calibration. This means that the effects of all remaining significant systematic errors must be estimated. Because the “true” value of a measured variable is never known and because a systematic error does not vary at a given condition, there are no measurement or statistical procedures such as those of Chapter 2 that can be used generally to provide estimates of systematic uncertainties.

The MCM approach for determining b_r, the systematic uncertainty in the experimental result, has been shown in Figures 3.2 and 3.3. Shown schematically in Figure 6.1 are the steps in the TSM procedure. Each measurement system used to determine the value of an individual variable is influenced by a number of elemental error sources. Systematic uncertainties are estimated for the elemental sources and combined to form the estimate of the systematic uncertainty for each measured variable. The systematic uncertainties of the individual variables are then propagated using the TSM approach to obtain the systematic uncertainty for the experimental result.

Figure 6.1 TSM Detailed uncertainty analysis: determination of systematic uncertainty for ...