Flexible Equipment for a Varied Range of Measurement Tasks
For the fuselage shell test, IMA Dresden is commissioning a test bench that has been developed from scratch. The design of the servo-hydraulic test bench is a proprietary development borne out of extensive in-house experience, as Gerd Striegler, Head of Measurement Technology at IMA Dresden, explains: “The modified design makes the test bench more flexible for different tests, component dimensions and test standards.” What’s more, several types of stress can be exerted simultaneously and tested in a realistic manner.
The new test bench uses about 30 hydraulic actuators with suitable HBK force transducers, so that it can simulate motion-related tensile, compressive and shear stresses. The reactions to these are measured by 500 strain gauges applied on the test specimen. To achieve this, IMA Dresden relies fully on the QuantumX data acquisition system from HBK for recording the strain gauge signals in various bridge configurations and digitally conditioning them for further processing.
QuantumX is a plug-and-measure solution with comprehensive support of TEDS (Transducer Electronic Data Sheet) technology, which enables fast and flexible adaptation of the test bench in whichever way is needed. The sensor characteristics of each individual sensor are automatically read out from the TEDS chip installed in the sensor or connector, and thus significantly reducing setup times when reconfiguring measurement tasks. Manual entries – frequently the cause of errors – are no longer needed.
Freely Scalable Measurement System
With test benches of this scale, the QuantumX MX1615B, which is far more than just a measurement module, really demonstrates its versatility. The compact design includes 16 measurement inputs with universal channels. The high channel density means the system is freely scalable but also has a smaller footprint. Therefore, each module is flexible and can be distributed as required close to the measurement spots of the test specimen, both as an individual device and interconnected in a large system. In practice, each module can be removed on a day-to-day basis – for small-scale tests, for example – or modules added if more channels are needed.
Christof Salcher, Director Product Management at HBK, names further advantages of this solution: “The individual modules can be used either single or highly distributed and interconnected with a single cable. Synchronous digitization close to the measurement point saves the need for extensive sense leads, enables faster setups and improves signal quality. Together with our catman software it is truly an easy-to-use overall solution solving many testing challenges.”
The modules transmit the data via Ethernet directly to the HBK catman software running on a PC for data visualization, online and post-process analysis, data storage and remote monitoring. For the large test benches commonly used at IMA Dresden, the software also supports visualization on several screens.