Traceability of Voltage Measurements for Non-Sinusoidal Waveforms

This paper describes the result of work performed at the Laboratoire National de Métrologie et d'Essais (LNE) aiming at developing a standard system to measure RMS value and harmonic contents of distorted voltage waveforms by means of a sampling voltmeter. Thermal converters are used to trace the RMS value to the SI units. The error of the DVM has been generally found less than 10 μV/V up to 2 kHz but can reach about 50 μV/V at 2.5 kHz for RMS voltage measurements for sine waves. For distorted waveforms, deviations within 15 μV/V have been obtained whatever the total harmonic distortion of the waveforms.