What does a voltmeter measure, RMS or Peak voltage?

Most cheap AC voltmeters read average of the rectified waveform, and the calibration of the scale changes that number to the equivalent RMS voltage.

In other words, most meters will read RMS voltage, but the number is accurate only for a pure sine wave input. For a non-sinusoidal input, or for a distorted sine wave, the reading will not be accurate.

Better meters will read "true RMS" and will be labeled as such. These will read the RMS voltage of a variety of waveforms.

.

This Site Might Help You.

RE:

What does a voltmeter measure, RMS or Peak voltage?

Hello everybody!

What does a voltmeter measure, RMS or Peak voltage?

Thank you in advance!

RMS

To be more precise> vmeter takes the peak reading and multiplies by 1/sqrt(2) to obtain the RMS voltage

Voltmeters are typically calibrated to read r.m.s & assume that the waveform is pure sine-wave.

rms