Main target of politics and economics is to develop standards for the next phase of more fuel efficient vehicles, particularly directed towards medium to heavy duty fleets. This will help with bolstering energy security & cut carbon pollution, thereby saving money and supporting the manufacturing innovation. As such, engine manufacturers and drivetrain engineers have a challenge - to enhance the performance of current and future engines with fuel efficiencies so as to be compliant with the standards, as well as lead over their competition & satisfy customer expectations.
Today's essential success factors include lightning-fast response to market needs with new products, which are nevertheless mature. Manufacturers must respond to this with shorter development times and test methods that are both efficient and flexible. This in turn requires separation organizationally and in terms of time when preparing and conducting test tasks. Efficiency improvement by a factor of 10 can be achieved here. Energy efficiency is an important issue in the automotive and aviation industries. Focus is shifting increasingly to engine development, rolling resistance and energy conversion efficiency.
First, it must be possible to implement the test structures quickly. This can be achieved with intelligent sensors and measuring amplifier systems that communicate with each other and exchange configuration data, for example by using TEDS sensor data detection. Essential preconditions for this are high quality of measured values and accuracy. HBM's torque flanges of series T10, T12 and T40 meet both these preconditions – high accuracy combined with high dynamics and rotational speed.
In addition, the measuring amplifier and control system must be capable of further processing the measurement data in real time, so that the test bench can then be regulated. It is also essential to make measurement data available at high resolution for analysis and to save it. To achieve real efficiency gains, all these functions must be combined in a single device. The PMX® measuring amplifier system was developed by HBM based on these requirements. It allows for use in testing and proving grounds and can also be used as a measurement and automation system in the production area. This is made possible by flexibly fitting it with measurement and output channels. Depending on the level of automation, analog or Ethernet-based fieldbus interfaces can be used in real time.
It is exactly this flexibility of hardware combined with the possibility of data recording at the highest data rate and resolution that brings users a further efficiency gain by a factor of up to 30.