Browse Topic: Tools and equipment
Impact testing utilizing instrumented hammers and accelerometers is a widely adopted technique in dynamic testing. The mass loading effect of the accelerometer alters the dynamic response of the test structure, leading to deviations between the measured frequency response functions (FRFs) and their true values. Furthermore, the effects on the FRFs are contingent upon the positioning of the accelerometer, thereby causing the measured FRFs between two points to fail to meet the principle of reciprocity. This paper investigates the compensation method for the mass of a single accelerometer in impact testing. Compensation formulas for both origin–FRF and cross–FRF are derived using the frequency domain substructure decoupling method. Numerical simulations on a cantilever beam and experimental tests with milling tools validate the proposed methodology. The compensation formulas for FRFs presented in this paper are expected to enhance the measurement accuracy of FRFs in modal testing of small structures, particularly relevant for lightweight components in aerospace, aircraft, and transportation systems, where precise dynamic characterization is critical.
This device belongs to the field of aviation materials technology and discloses a high-efficiency drilling equipment for manufacturing aviation materials, which includes a bottom plate. The top of the bottom plate is provided with a clamping structure and a positioning structure. The clamping structure includes a second moving plate, a third sliding groove, a second bi-directional screw, a fourth screw block, a clamping plate, and a rubber block. This device can hold materials through a clamping structure and effectively and quickly locate and drill holes through a positioning structure. By rotating the first threaded rod, it can drive the first screw block to move the U-shaped column. During the movement of the U-shaped column, it will drive the second threaded rod to move together. By rotating the second threaded rod, it will drive the second screw block to adjust the height of the connecting plate for drilling holes. By rotating the third threaded rod, it will drive the first moving plate to move, which will facilitate the multi-directional movement of the drill bit, improve the efficiency of drilling, avoid multiple position changes, and be beneficial for practical applications and operations.
This study carefully designed and successfully developed a mechanical voltage stabilizing control device. The device uses silicone oil as the key component material of the liquid spring and 1Cr13 as the main material of the pressure control unit, enhancing its high-pressure resistance (up to 35 MPa), oxidation resistance, and acid-alkali corrosion resistance. By optimizing the transmission mechanism and simplifying the pressure regulation module, the device achieves a pressure regulation range of 0.1–21 MPa with an accuracy of ±0.01 MPa, significantly broader and more precise than traditional devices. To address manufacturing challenges, advanced CNC machine tools, ceramic cutting tools, and optimized heat treatment processes (e.g., quenching and tempering) were adopted, ensuring component machining accuracy within ±0.02 mm. Field applications in 13 oil wells demonstrated a 15.6% increase in daily oil production (from 25.5 t/d to 29.5 t/d) and a 17.9% increase in daily gas production (from 2800 m^3/d to 3300 m^3/d), with stable casing pressure control at 5.3 MPa. The device has created 1.225 million yuan in economic benefits while eliminating safety hazards, providing critical technical support for efficient and environmentally friendly oil and gas production.
With the increasing demand for material microimaging analysis, there is a growing need for advanced precision grinding and polishing equipment, especially for metals, ceramics, and composites. Existing automated systems struggle with handling complex material challenges. This paper presents a fully automated adaptive grinding and polishing machine based on an STM32 microcontroller that handles multi-material samples. The system includes modules for sample access, cleaning, pad replacement, human-computer interaction, and equipment communication. The STM32 microcontroller executes grinding and polishing tasks based on instructions from the host computer while dynamically adjusting PID control parameters using an improved weighted average optimization algorithm. This approach enhances control accuracy, stability, and overall surface treatment quality compared to traditional PID control methods.
Civil aircraft, as typical complex product systems, exhibit characteristics such as a high concentration of high-tech technologies, strong interdisciplinarity, a high level of system integration, long development cycles, substantial project investments, and complex management. During the R&D process of civil aircraft projects, there are often high risks in performance, cost, and schedule. Delays in the schedule can lead to losses in project manpower and material resources, as well as project failure. A mature objective criteria system for maturity assessment provides a reference basis for determining whether the project has reached its optimal state at a specific stage, thereby reducing project management risks and increasing the probability of project success. This research will adopt a research approach combining theoretical studies with practical case analysis. First, it will conduct extensive and in-depth investigations into various maturity models and their applications across the entire product lifecycle within relevant fields. A requirement maturity model and requirement maturity KPI (Key Performance Indicator) indicators will be established to clarify the maturity status of requirements at different development stages, enabling judgment of whether the project is ready to proceed to the next development phase. Concurrently, by developing a KPI statistical system platform integrating application servers and data processing tools, a scientific and quantitative inspection mechanism will be implemented to visualize project development progress, status, and risk data. This will provide actionable insights for project decision-making and achieve effective project management and control.
The gearbox is a key component of the mechanical transmission system, and its fault diagnosis is essential to the reliability of the equipment. However, obtaining fault samples under actual working conditions for gearbox fault diagnosis is challenging. In this paper, the rigid-flexible coupling dynamic simulation model of the gearbox is established, and the co-simulation of gear normal, crack, and breakage is carried out in the ADAMS and MATLAB environments. The comparison between the simulated and measured signals shows that the simulation method can accurately reflect the key characteristics, such as rotation frequency and meshing frequency, and verify its reliability and accuracy. The research results can provide effective data support for gearbox fault diagnosis and improve the operational safety of mechanical systems.
Medical device manufacturing is undergoing a structural shift. As devices become smaller with broader functionality, traditional approaches to assembling electronics are no longer sufficient. Increasingly, performance, durability, and reliability are dictated not just by design, but by how that design is manufactured.
Current lithium-ion batteries should generally only be charged above 0 °C, as charging below this temperature can promote lithium plating and irreversible degradation. However, conventional pack-level heating elements increase system mass and design complexity. In addition, heat is transferred from outside into the cell, causing the temperature inside the cell to rise slowly. This study evaluates internal Joule heating of cylindrical Li-ion cells using a zero-mean square-wave current excitation and quantifies the associated aging impact. LG INR21700-M50L cells were tested at 0 °C, −10 °C, and −20 °C with three excitation frequencies (50 Hz, 1 Hz, 10 mHz) at 5 A amplitude. Each cycle consisted of 30 min heating followed by 60 min cooling; reference capacity-based state of health (SOH) was assessed every 50 cycles up to 400 cycles. A maximum surface temperature rise of 14.3 K was achieved, with larger temperature rise at lower ambient temperature and lower excitation frequency. Capacity fade remained below approximately 1% for most conditions; however, at −20 °C and 10 mHz a pronounced SOH decrease to 87% was observed, indicating a critical operating regime. The results provide practical guidance for pulse-heating parameter selection and highlight the need for safeguards and further diagnostics in extreme low-frequency excitation at very low temperatures. This heating approach is particularly suitable for simpler battery-electric applications without thermal management, such as e-bikes or power tools. However, it may also be relevant for applications with existing thermal management systems, as it simplifies battery pack design.
The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS, President: Dr. Lee Ho Seong) has developed equipment that monitors the quality of hydrogen fuel supplied to vehicles through hydrogen refueling stations in real-time. This equipment is expected to prevent hydrogen vehicle accidents caused by impurities in the hydrogen fuel and improve the quality of hydrogen production.
With $800 of off-the-shelf equipment and months’ worth of patience, a team of U.S. computer scientists set out to find out how well geostationary satellite communications are encrypted. And what they found was shocking.
Researchers discover texts, phone calls, military communication, internal corporate networks all easily eavesdropped on using off-the-shelf equipment. University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA With $800 of off-the-shelf equipment and months' worth of patience, a team of U.S. computer scientists set out to find out how well geostationary satellite communications are encrypted. And what they found was shocking. Close to half of the communications beamed from satellites to the ground that the researchers were able to listen in on were not encrypted. This included sensitive data including cellular text messages, voice calls, as well as sensitive military information, data from internal corporate and bank networks, and the in-flight online activity of airline passengers.
Metal-elastomer bonded components can suffer from manufacturing defects such as porosity and bond-line voids. Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) methods can replace or supplement existing destructive tests; however, implementation can be challenging for manufacturers due to the initial equipment cost, time required per test, and imaging quality. These criteria were used to evaluate shearography, high-resolution ultrasound testing (UT), 2D projection X-ray, computed tomography (CT), and acoustic emission (AE) testing, culminating in trade studies for different sample part types. Experimental work was performed on three samples of varying geometries and sizes with seeded defects, applying feasible NDE methods to each. Shearography succeeded in detecting void defects and flow fronts. X-ray and CT failed to detect flaws in 2 out of 3 part types due to energy and time constraints. UT could not reliably detect defects in parts with complex geometries because of scatter. Acoustic emission reliably detected a seeded knit-line defect.
The impact of ship airwake on helicopter operations to rear flight decks has been a topic of much research over the past three decades. While generic ships have been developed over the years to enable analysis tool and knowledge development, actual ships can vary significantly, resulting in different airwake features. The study of variations in ship geometry is important both to understand how differences may impact operations, but also to understand the level of geometrical fidelity that is required on ship models undergoing analysis. In Canada, the newly launched (2018) Harry DeWolf-class Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships (AOPS) have unique features that have been studied for their impact on airwake characteristics. This paper explores different geometrical characteristics from the perspective of their operational impacts and also considering their importance for inclusion in simulation. The paper shows that turbulence level is the parameter most affected by the minor variations that were examined, and helps guide the inclusion or exclusion of details in future ship models.
With the rise of software-defined vehicles and the emergence of cyber threats to vehicular systems, developing teams are compelled to conduct extensive testing on both virtual and physical prototypes at an accelerated pace. This new development landscape necessitates diagnostic tools that are both precise and adaptable. However, proprietary systems dominate this field, often hindering accessibility for students and researchers due to high costs and restrictive licensing. This paper presents the design and implementation of an open-source, low-cost remote testing system tailored for automotive development and diagnostics. The proposed system utilizes Arduino and Raspberry Pi processing units, along with relay-based switching modules, to provide secure remote control of vehicle components through a web-based dashboard equipped with authentication, scheduling, and real-time synchronization capabilities. The tested prototype showcased robust scalability, secure session handling, and seamless integration with the open-source Woodpecker EV platform at the University of Detroit Mercy. The affordability and open-source nature of the framework offer a practical alternative to proprietary tools, while also enabling future adaptation to diverse automotive contexts.
The useability of development processes in the automotive sector has decreased in the past years to a level at which their application and true benefit to is being questioned. Such degradation can be attributed to new additions to the processes and introduction of FuSa and Cybersecurity standards. The processes try to keep up with the shift from the traditional ‘plan–implement–test–roll-out' methodology to more agile methods. In addition, process departments typically in charge of these processes, focus on compliance to the letter of the standard to achieve certification, often with little thought to the actual implementation and the process they will be used by their engineering teams. Process growth to meet the needs of new and more complex technologies often mandates the use of new tools, which if implemented incorrectly can lead to unnecessary bureaucracy and additional overheads. Furthermore, the language of these new processes is in a form from assessor, making it difficult for an engineer to understand, interpret and implement. As a result, engineers become annoyed, losing productivity and motivation when working with what they perceive as burdensome standards, that simply exist to slow development. This has a huge impact on the competitiveness of companies especially in markets that are facing existential threats from internal and external pressures such as the automotive industry. Against popular belief, the application of generative AI (and large language models) will not solve the problem. On the contrary, it risks automating complex processes in the same unfamiliar language and creating documents to serve process overhead, rather than engineering development. This paper presents inefficiencies in the current state-of-the art processes used in the automotive sector and proposes a structured approach that increases the efficiency of automotive software development. It does so by documenting and implementing development processes based on how engineers actually perform their work. In the second step the adjustments that are necessary to ensure compliance of the product with industry standards are made. Such an approach produces efficient, compact and compliant process definition.
This paper builds on last year’s paper presenting DevOps automation in the context of model-based development. Following that paper, we interviewed Simulink users in passenger automotive, motorsports, commercial vehicles, aviation, rocketry, and industrial automation. We discovered that much of the benefit of DevOps platforms to reduce product development cycle time relies on their interactive features. We prototyped new tools to bridge interactive DevOps Git-based platforms with model-based development workflows, and then gathered reactions from another round of interviews. Here we present these interactive DevOps workflows with the feedback from these interviews to contextualize how engineering teams could adopt them to accelerate their own model-based workflows.
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