DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEMS
AEROSPACETESTINGINTERNATIONAL.COM // SHOWCASE 2020 105
choose the best suited instruments for
their needs, whether their needs be costbased
or accuracy-based.
Besides labor and instrumentation,
savings for owners of engine test facilities
will also come from less wiring. Building a
new facility or retrofitting an existing one
often includes hundreds of feet of wiring
for instruments. With an ethernet-based,
distributed system, wiring becomes less of
a challenge. The ability to put the
instrument closer to the test article and
only having to deal with one network cable
instead of a large bundle traveling
hundreds of feet can be a huge cost savings
for the end user. This also results in less
wiring or electrical issues that can pose
problems in terms of test facility
troubleshooting and downtime.
ONE DAS TO RULE THEM ALL
Multi-use test facilities or scaling from an
MRO facility to a development facility
require different systems and different
instruments. These would often come with
a hefty price tag to change from a small
data acquisition system to a larger one that
LOWERING COSTS
Validating a new turbomachinery product
like a commercial engine is a gargantuan
feat. Developing the capability to run the
engine alone is often a very expensive task,
so saving costs with unmanned operation
or single operator control is a saving grace
for engine developers. The other typically
expensive and time-consuming task is the
requirement to develop drivers for new
instruments used to measure data on the
product being tested. MDS is taking the
lead on solving this challenge by chairing
an industry working group to develop a
standard iDDS communications protocol
for data acquisition and control
instruments. The new nxDAS system will
be the first to market this standard
protocol, demonstrating to the end users
that adding new iDDS-based instruments
does not have to be difficult or costly.
Research and development test facility
operators have been seeking this ‘plug-andplay’
technology for years due to the nature
of testing – it often requires a high level of
flexibility, customization and integration.
With nxDAS, the end user will be able to
1 // MDS has created a
data acquisition system to
improve test operator
experience
2 // Cause and effect
analyses are extremely
important when a new
product is undergoing
extensive validation testing
could handle more data, as well as the cost
to develop new software drivers. Adopting
new measurement capabilities would
typically involve substantial and costly
facility downtime as the system was
upgraded or changed. This new system will
be able to accommodate both because of its
inherent scalability.
End users that strictly use smaller data
acquisition systems, especially MRO
facilities, don’t require as many measured
and calculated channels. The number of
channels for an engine development
facility can be up to 25 times the average
number for an engine MRO facility; thus,
having a single data acquisition system
that has the capacity to handle both is a
game-changer for MDS. In the industry of
engine testing, MRO facilities aren’t
interested in paying premium prices for
features and channels they don’t need.
ANY DATA, ANYWHERE
The publish-subscribe paradigm for
exchanging data between clients means
that any number of clients can subscribe to
data for monitoring, control, and alarming
2
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