Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) for Steel Manufacturing Customer Case The customer is a custom-built contractor of Non-Destructive Test (NDT) instruments for steel manufacturing. NDT uses ultrasonic pulses to scan through thick sheets of metals for possible causes of early wear, such as cracks or impurities. The stimulus is a stream of ultrasonic pulses. The response is their reflection from various depths. The center frequencies used by this customer are in the range of 250 KHz to 2.25 MHz and pulses are about 10 microseconds. The pulse repeat frequency (PRF) is less than 1 KHz. The thickness of steel sheets is [...]

Galvannealing Phosphor Thermometry Customer Case During the process of galvanizing, steel is dipped in a bath of liquid tin to increase its resistance to oxidation and moisture. After galvanizing, a precise heat treatment allows control of the mechanical properties of the final galvanized steel. This heat treatment is known as galvannealing. During galvannealing, precise temperature control is necessary to promote the desired grain growth in the steel's tin-rich coating. Galvanneal thermometry is difficult. The rolling of the hot steel makes contact thermocouples and optical pyrometry impractical. A customer's galvanneal furnace is equipped for phosphor thermometry. This novel technique uses [...]

Pulsed Electric Field Food Processing Customer Case Pulsed Electric Field Food Processing is a continuous food processing system in which beverages (with a known conductivity) are pumped through a chamber containing an electrode. Pulses of high voltage electricity are passed across the electrode, thus through the liquid as well. It is a pasteurization technique being studied at Ohio State University. The need is to be able to monitor, display, and record to hard drive storage, voltage and current waveforms. They need to be able to draw information about the pulse duration, peak voltage, etc. from the recorded waveforms. Waveforms [...]

Nuclear Reactor Cooling Liquid Flow Measurements Customer Case The customer needs to make a flow meter that is able to measure the flow of liquid through a tube. In this case, water is used for nuclear reactor cooling. The obstacle is that the liquid must be measured while the tube remains intact. GaGe Case Solution Since the customer knows the application, he already has his own signal generator that produces the ultrasound, so he only required a good data acquisition card in order to acquire these ultrasonic signals. An amplified version of the signal coming from the transducer goes [...]

Phase Conjugate Sonar Customer Case Dissipationless physical systems, such as simple planetary motion or a swinging pendulum, exhibit time-reversal invariance. This means that if time were reversed the way a film projector can be, then the resulting motion would be allowed by the equations governing the system. It follows that if all velocities in a dissipationless system are suddenly reversed, the system will follow a time-reversed trajectory. Dissipationless or adiabatic wave propagation is time-reversal invariant. Phase Conjugate Optics involves the deliberate reversal of complex light paths. A customer is doing Phase Conjugate Sonar using sound instead of light. The [...]

Acoustic Engineering with Stimulus Response System Customer Case The performance of music without electrical amplification requires precise acoustic engineering of its venues. A customer advises concerning large-scale renovations to existing cathedrals, concert halls and opera houses. Renovations may include decoupling the structure from its surroundings to minimize outside noise and redesigning the interior in order to optimize echo patterns. Buildings are acoustically characterized with precision sound equipment. A sound Stimulus, S(t), is generated by a loudspeaker and the Response, R(t) is received by a microphone, where t is time. Usually, the loudspeaker and microphone are positioned at the musician [...]

Network Integrated Circuit (IC) Testing Customer Case A customer makes Integrated Circuit (IC) chips that are used in home network systems. These systems can communicate with many different electronic devices by using the standard 120 Volt, 60 Hz AC household wiring to transmit signals throughout the house. This eliminates the need for extra wiring. They need to test their IC chips before selling them to the company who builds the network systems. They need to test the bit failure rate, the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), chip sensitivity and noise indifference. For these tests, they require a programmable analog [...]

Automotive Engine Controller Monitoring Customer Case The customer is a major electronics manufacturer who wants to find a cost effective replacement to VXI digitizers in testing automotive engine control signals. The requirement is for several ATE stations. Each one will require 4 single-ended channels or 2 "true differential" channels, 4 MHz of input analog bandwidth (mostly single shot) with voltage ranges from 0.05 to 70 volts. The digitizers must have at least 12 bits of vertical resolution, 0.5% accuracy and ½ MegaSample per channel of acquisition memory. The customer would like to operate the station under a controlling LabVIEW [...]

Fiber Optic Automated Measurement System Customer Case The customer is in the business of developing lasers and LED components for fiber optic data \ telecommunications applications. The requirement is for an automated test system to monitor the pulse characteristics of the laser. The customer will require 3 channels at high vertical resolution due to the fact that some variances in amplitude will be only 1 mV and need to be detected. The goal is to capture 10,000 samples per channel at 50 MegaSamples per second with a 1 KHz to 5 KHz Pulse Repeat Frequency (PRF). The customer would [...]