The Acoustic Test Facility at CSIR-NAL in Bangalore uses a Prosig DATS system to measure vibration and strain on spacecraft and launch vehicles for the Indian Space Programme.
Project at a glance
- Customer: Acoustic Test Facility (ATF), CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories
- Location: Bangalore, India
- Applications: Space, Aerospace
- Products used: DTAS-hyper12; DATS software
Background
The Acoustic Test Facility (ATF) at CSIR-NAL in Bangalore uses a Prosig DATS system to measure vibration and strain during tests for the Indian Space Programme.
The challenge
Rocket blast can damage a payload and the launch vehicle's subsystems, so acoustic testing is vital to a successful mission. The ATF simulates the fluctuating sound pressure field experienced by the payload and launch vehicle during lift-off and atmospheric flight, inside a 1,100 m³ reverberation chamber. The facility provides acoustic qualification to MIL-STD-810G.
During each test, accelerometers mounted at critical locations measure the structure's vibration response to the acoustic loading. The time-domain data is then processed to give power spectral density and root mean square values.
The solution
The Prosig system at CSIR-NAL is built on DATS-hyper12 hardware (previously known as the P8048), with nearly 200 channels of vibration measurement and a further 16 channels of strain measurement.
The DATS-hyper12 is a rack-mount chassis populated with data acquisition and signal conditioning modules. Each rack is stand-alone, with its own controller and data storage, giving an overall acquisition and storage rate in excess of 100 kHz. Multiple units synchronise to a common clock signal and act as a single, high channel-count system.
The results
- More than 100 spacecraft, launch vehicles and subsystems tested to date (at the time of publication)
- Synchronised vibration and strain data from over 200 channels
- Data exported in industry-standard file formats for post-processing in specialist third-party analysis and simulation packages
- A flexible, modular system suited to the demands of the space industry
System at a glance
- DATS-hyper12 rack-mount data acquisition
- Nearly 200 vibration channels
- 16 strain channels
- Acoustic qualification to MIL-STD-810G
Related products
- No. of Channels: 96 per unit, stackable to 1,000+
- Resolution: 24-bit
- Max Sample Rate: 300k samples/sec/channel (24-bit)
- Connectivity: Ethernet, USB
- Power: Mains or vehicle