Bespoke end-to-end Engineering Projects
Circuit Breaker Test Benches for use by a Bureau of Standards
The system was designed to test circuit breakers based on international standards. The input current was controlled by custom hardware, allowing the current to be injected at different angles, waveforms and positions in the input waveform. The testing program was written to control and automate the entire testing procedure. A custom report for the standards on the various circuit breakers tested is generated.
Supersonic Wind Tunnel Instrumentation System
A supersonic wind tunnel system was instrumented and sensors were used to time a camera to capture the reflected waves. This was done with high speed pressure sensors (5Mhz) and digital output signals. The system also catered for the automation of the processes and actuators which led to shockwave generation. Additional functionality was provided to measure strains on the test samples.
Sensor Cable Quality of a Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR)
Design of system that can measure the Time Domain Reflection characteristics/quality of a sensor cable (10mHz per channel) over 1km in length and transmit the settings back to the SpeedVOD.
Ride Quality Analysis System for High Speed Passenger Railway
The system was designed as a generic locomotive testing device with signal conditioning for triaxial IEPE Accelerometers (24bit, 50khz per channel), microphones, high speed GPS, and analogue input for generic sensors (-10v – 10v input, 16 bit, 50khz). The software was written in LabVIEW and a highly robust embedded test bench (Compact Rio) was used as hardware . Additionally, the system was radio-link controlled with custom hardware. Ride quality analysis software was developed, linked to the GPS coordinates and displayed to the end user.
Locomotive Weighbridge
Full turnkey system measures the mass of a locomotive or wagon. The vehicle is pushed over the weighbridge \ instrumented rail at the test site. Custom strain gauge amplifier cards and custom engineered loadcells purpose built for the environment, were developed for this application.
Uniaxial Compression Test System for Rock Mining Research
The system resides in a university and primarily used to quantify the failure modes of samples. Strain gauged samples are compressed until destruction. The data acquisition and test system recorded the radial and compressive strain & computes the stress strain curves for student, research and post-graduate analysis.
Compressor Monitoring System for Synthetic Fuels Manufacturing Company
The project involved the acquisition of two dedicated data acquisition systems of approximately 140 channels. The systems were all time synchronized to a dedicated server and the data was sent from the sub-systems to the central server via fibre optics. The software was designed in-house. The GPS timing and synchronization for the systems were developed using LabView.
Strain Systems used in Open Cast Mining Operations
Development of strain gauge layouts and algorithms used to weigh existing silos (100 ton silos used for storing ingredients to manufacture explosives on open cast mines). Customised development of the strain gauge amplifiers, installation and commissioning.