The equations given here for the Wheatstone bridge circuits assume an initially balanced bridge that generates zero output when no strain is applied. In practice, however, resistance tolerances and strain induced by gage application generate some initial offset voltage. This initial offset voltage is typically handled in two ways. First, you can use a special offset-nulling, or balancing, circuit to adjust the resistance in the bridge to rebalance the bridge to zero output. Alternatively, you can measure the initial unstrained output of the circuit and compensate in software. This topic is discussed in greater detail later.
The equations given above for quarter-, half-, and full-bridge strain gage configurations assume that the lead wire resistance is negligible. While ignoring the lead resistance may be beneficial to understanding the basics of strain gage measurements, doing so in practice can be a major source of error. For example, consider the 2-wire connection of a strain gage shown in Figure 8a. Suppose each lead wire connected to the strain gage is 15 m long with lead resistance RL equal to 1 Ω. Therefore, the lead resistance adds 2 Ω of resistance to that arm of the bridge. Besides adding an offset error, the lead resistance also desensitizes the output of the bridge.
You can compensate for this error by measuring the lead resistance RL and accounting for it in the strain calculations. However, a more difficult problem arises from changes in the lead resistance due to temperature fluctuations. Given typical temperature coefficients for copper wire, a slight change in temperature can generate a measurement error of several microstrain.
Using a 3-wire connection can eliminate the effects of variable lead wire resistance because the lead resistance affects adjacent legs of the bridge. As seen in Figure 8b, changes in lead wire resistance, RL2, do not change the ratio of the bridge legs R3 and RG. Therefore, any changes in resistance due to temperature cancel out each other.