The automobile is currently being re-invented yet again. New drive concepts are not all that's revolutionizing automotive manufacturing. A decisive role is also played by the use of innovative and especially lighter materials. Ranging from fiber composites to hybrid materials or super-high-strength metallic materials, they all have one thing in common: they are all lighter than the cold-formed steels used in the past. This makes it possible to develop and produce automobiles that are lighter and ultimately more economical.
The Institute for Lightweight Construction in Automobiles (LIA) at the University of Paderborn examines and develops lightweight construction concepts with these and other new materials. The institute conducts quasi-static, cyclic and highly dynamic test sequences for verification of component groups and material concepts.
In-house Component Crash Test Bench
The LIA also has extensive testing options available, for example an in-house component crash test bench that can be used for crash performance analysis at speeds up to 25 m/s with an energy of 32 kJ.
The test bench can be used for deformation analysis of components, highly dynamic quick breaking load tests, highly dynamic cupping tests and more. Two high-speed cameras with recording frequency of up to 100 kHz can be used for analysis of test series. To ensure effective evaluation and analysis of the crash process, the force response on the clamping plate or on the slide must be measured as well as the displacement curve of the slide and the impact speed of the slide.
Every test bench is ultimately only as good as the measurement data acquisition systems it uses. For this reason the LIA relies on the GEN5i (successor GEN7i) measurement data acquisition system from HBM to record and analyze their collected measurement data. Benefits of the system include very high sampling rates, as well as a high level of data security and fast data processing in the integrated Perception software.
GEN7i Measurement Data Acquisition System
The GEN7i data acquisition system is a complete, portable test laboratory. This means that GEN7i includes all the components needed for complex measurement tasks. It covers the entire measuring chain, including input amplifier, filter, selection of measurement sequence with sampling rate adjustment and trigger events, preprocessing, analysis and storage of measurement data.
The measurement electronics of the GEN7i also capture transients and interference peaks. Extensive series of tests can be recorded easily and rapidly thanks to the large transient memory with a capacity of up to 9 gigasamples.