New Acoustic Emission Measurement System AMSY-6: Hartmut VALLEN, Jochen VALLEN, Thomas THENIKL
New Acoustic Emission Measurement System AMSY-6: Hartmut VALLEN, Jochen VALLEN, Thomas THENIKL
New Acoustic Emission Measurement System AMSY-6: Hartmut VALLEN, Jochen VALLEN, Thomas THENIKL
System AMSY-6
Hartmut VALLEN 1, Jochen VALLEN1, Thomas THENIKL1
ABSTRACT
KEYWORDS:
AE instrumentation
INTRODUCTION
In the European research project CORFAT (Cost effective corrosion and fatigue
monitoring for transport products), partly funded by the European Commission FP7 program
(Contract SCP7-GA-2008-218637) a need came up to modify the AMSY-5 system for
permanent monitoring of a tank lorry carrying explosive goods. Sensors on the tank must be
certified intrinsically safe for explosion hazardous zone 1, according to the European ATEX
directive (EG94/9). The PC and measurement system must be installed in the driver cabin of
the tank lorry, which is classified to a less explosion hazardous area, zone 2.
1
Vallen Systeme GmbH, 82057 Icking, Germany, info@vallen.de
During the definition of the needed modifications, the system controller ASyC has been
identified as main bottleneck to make AMSY-5 explosion proof. ASyC is an AE dedicated
PCI board installed within the PC. We have not found an interface solution using ASyC with
an explosion proof PC, so a new interface was developed. In the course of further analysis of
the needed modification, we had to decide to consider a number of other details. Finally, we
decided to give this modified system a new name, AMSY-6.
REALISATION
The leftmost frontpanel of each box is called Control Panel (CP1). At two switches the
user can enable or disable data recording during measurement. The upper switch disables or
enables AE-feature and waveform data recording, the lower switch controls waveform data
recording only.
The 4 BNC sockets on CP1 are parametric inputs. The measurement range of each input
can be configured by software to ±1 V or ±10 V at 16 bit resolution. Each input is fully
differential and the shield as reference input is isolated from ground in order to avoid ground
loop disturbances induced by different ground potentials between AE system and parameter
source. The differential function is maintained over an input range of ±40V at each input pole.
The parametric reference pole (shield) should have a relation with ground of signal source
±30V.
Each parametric input is sampled every 50 µs. All samples during the user-defined
acquisition clock, e.g. 20 samples during a 1ms parametric clock, are averaged, what results
in a low pass filter that effectively eliminates undesired noise.
All other front panels in Figure 1 belong to AE-signal processors of type ASIP-2. All
other BNC connectors are connected to AE preamplifiers. In case of using intrinsically safe
sensors, signal isolators act as safety barriers, assuring that voltage, current, power and pulse
amplitudes transferred into the hazardous zone are limited as specified in ATEX Standard EN
60079-11 (intrinsic safety). Figure 2 is a simplified block diagram showing the main
components of the AE monitoring system.
Housing for N signal isolators, AE-system and PC. Protection Class: IP54
Hazardous area of zone 1 Hazardous area of zone 2 (driver cabin)
Main Extension
Chassis Frontpanel Chassis Frontpanel
PA PA LEDs,
AE-Channels 4-7 0-3 Sw. AE-Channels
with or w/o with or w/o
TR Option TR Option
Speaker
Speaker
PAP
USYC USYC
DAC-Board DAC-Board
(DACs, Audio Amp..) (DACs, Audio Amp..)
Prev.P.
Prev.P.
Next P.
Next P.
Alarm
Alarm
Addr
Addr
USB
USB
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We are thankful for the receipt of funding of the European Commission within the
research project "Cost effective corrosion and fatigue monitoring for transport products"
(CORFAT) Contract SCP7-GA-2008-218637 www.corfat.eu.