Pacific Provides Integrated Acquisition Support for Pressure Scanners
Pacific Instruments, Concord California manufacturer of data acquisition systems and software announces the integration of software support for Pressure Systems, Inc. (PSI) line of pressure scanners. Used extensively in wind tunnel, flight and propulsion system testing, the pressure scanner provides a powerful but economic means of acquiring large numbers of concentrated pressure measurements. Integrating these pressure measurements with other measured parameters such as strain, acceleration, position and temperature has often proved to be challenging.
In the past, the pressure scanner system has been independent of the data acquisition system; measuring, recording and displaying other parameters. This necessitated two control stations, two independent sets of data displays and multiple data files. It was left up to the user to time align and integrate data from the independent systems.
The latest version of Pacific’s PI660 Data Acquisition Software now fully supports the PSI pressure scanners used in aerospace applications. A single operator’s workstation performs setup, calibration, control and acquisition for both the pressure scanners and Pacific’s Series 6000 Data Acquisition System that acquires strain, acceleration, position, discrete, frequency and temperature measurements. Real-time data from both systems is viewed on a single set of displays that includes tabular data, strip charts, bar charts, bit-maps and others. Data can be networked to client workstations for recording and additional data displays. Each client workstation may display any combination of pressure scanner and Series 6000 DAS acquired data.
Pressure scanners require a specific calibration process that is implemented by PI660. It provides for definition of Calibration Valve Modes and Calibration Stabilization Times as well as the definition of up to five calibration pressure levels per unit. From the pressure scanner it reads the calibration coefficients and calibration data, which is then presented in spread sheet format with out-of-limit data points highlighted. Calibration coefficients are saved to a file that may be downloaded to scanner hardware for subsequent tests.
PI660 supports the DTC Initium, 8400, and the 9000 Series of PSI pressure scanner modules. A single user interface sets up and operates the Pacific Series 6000 DAS with any or all of these scanners. The user merely tells PI660 which PSI products are to be included, and PI660 provides the user with setup and calibration screens that are tailored to that product.
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