Control and Data Acquisition System for Universal Testing Frames

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

A new control and data acquisition system is required to preserve and upgrade our mechanical testing capabilities in the Laboratoire d'étude de la durée de vie des infrastructures publiques in the Department of Civil and Water engineering. This laboratory serves not only as the base centre of many research projects spanning from the study of cracking behaviour of ultra-high performance fibre reinforced concrete to the investigation of cyclic loading response of large-scale prefabricated aluminum bridge decks, but also as the setting for the design and development of novel methods for testing and evaluating materials. This new control and data acquisition system is urgently required to replace the current 20-year-old system, for which recent repairs have been extremely difficult to implement and replacement parts are no longer available. A breakdown of the present system would jeopardize significant portions of our research activities and would thereby impact the progress of some of our graduate students towards completion of their program. The importance of the actual control and data acquisition system cannot be understated. It is used to control and run several testing apparatuses: one 500 kN universal testing frame with t-slot testing table and a large vertical opening, one 1 MN stocky universal testing frame as well as a set of five (5) hydraulic actuators located in our large-scale environmental room. Including the hydraulic power-pack and the various manifold and valve systems, this controller and data acquisition system is at the top of a 1.5+ M$ worth of equipment used every day in research projects associated to 10 professors. The control and data acquisition system package sought are essentially three (3) components: 1) the Controller; 2) a collection of dedicated powerful interface boards; and 3) the Control Software suite. The MTS FlexTestr100 Controller is a reliable and versatile servocontroller that provides real-time reliable closed-loop control, along with a wide array of possible configurations, making it the perfect controller for our various testing set-ups. The collection of dedicated interface boards includes all the hardware needed with the controller to adequately run the hydraulic systems (frame and actuators) and capture in parallel the signals from a variety of sensors (strain, displacement, pressure, etc.). Finally, the MTS Control Software allows to create the tests and link together all of the aforementioned hardware elements. The key outcome for the users (a) a highly improved control of the test progress (essential in studies involving cracking of localized damage mechanisms); (b) an increased measurement resolution and precision, both during static and cyclic loading schemes (a necessity for some of the newest standardized test methods); and (c) a simplified and significantly upgraded capacity for developing and testing experimental procedures (a key element for optimally exploiting the testing infrastructure).