I have read through this topic and I also am faced with a problem.
Just to paint a picture. I am a fourth year mechanical engineering student from Stellenbosch University (South Africa). I am busy with my final year project which is as follows: "Develop a system to measure the torque on the shaft of a turbocharger".
While in essence it doesn't sound to hard, there are quite a few obstacles. Firstly the systems sound preferably work up to 30 000 rpm which eliminate using slip rings or any contact system. Secondly there isn't much free space on an assembled turbocharger for mounting any systems.
For this reason I have simplified the system by not going up to 30 000 rpm but maybe near 3000 rpm. Also I am going to have my own shaft machined and fitted with the compressor and turbine from and existing turbocharger.
So after all of this I actually need to get to my questions. I thought of using to gap sensors (or optical encoders), one of each end of the shaft, then by measuring the difference in time that it takes for each sensor to get a reading and having the rotational speed, one can determine the torsion angle of the shaft.
In theory this seems to be a viable option. Does anyone have any advice for me on how to do this. I do not have much programming skill and really want to use an arduino. so I need info on how fast arduinos can log data and what the max interrupt speed of and arduino is. Also what functions should I used to log the time at which the arduino receives the sensed information?
If anyone has any advice I would deeply appreciate it.