Straightforward access to data from wheel force transducer

Every innovation goes hand in hand with simplification. Just look to the items from your daily live. Are you, just by any chance, wearing a watch that can track your fitness activity, something like Fitbit or Garmin? Isn’t it cool that you just put the watch on your wrist, couple it with your smartphone and from that moment on, you can instantly access your fitness performance? No need to wear the funky chest strap or anything else any longer.

And this is how we want our customers to feel. It is our goal, that test engineers consider the Simcenter testing solutions simple to use. And also, that they value the compatibility with numerous sensor brands to increase the testing efficiency. Here one example. 

The perfect match: Kistler RoaDyn wheel force transducer and Simcenter SCADAS

An example of a state-of-the art sensor is the Kistler RoaDyn® wheel force transducer. This transducer is one of the key instrumentation devices in durability and vehicle dynamic testing. It measures simultaneously forces and moments acting on a spinning wheel, as well as the rotational speed and angular position of the wheel. Such a rotating transducer consists of a four to six triaxial force cells. These cells send the data via telemetry to an electronic device – the Kistler KiRoad Performance Interface. Here, all individual signals are combined and recalculated into a set of forces and moments according to the vehicle coordinate system.

Siemens Simcenter recently launched (read more about the Simcenter Testlab release here) a new Simcenter SCADAS module, the SCM-WFI2-KR, which connects to the Kistler KiRoad Performance interface and gathers all data of all 4 wheels through one single connection – in a digital format!

The main benefits of this digital solution are productivity and ease-of-use: the complex wheel force transducers are calibrated with the Kistler on-board electronics, and all data is digitally transferred via one single cable to the Simcenter SCADAS, based on an Ethernet protocol. A clock and trigger line guarantee perfect synchronization with the other Simcenter SCADAS data streams, such as analog data, GPS and video signals.

This means that time-consuming and tedious jobs like, instrumenting tens of analog cables, channel-by-channel calibration or even off-line time data synchronization of the measured data streams, belong in the past. Now, you only need to connect the Simcenter SCADAS and the Kistler KiRoad Performance, define the sample rate and start measuring.

Op top, measuring Kistler wheel force transducers is supported in different ways, dependent of the use case.

First of all, there’s the well-known on-line measurement with Simcenter Testlab. All data is streamed via an Ethernet cable to your laptop, connected to the Simcenter SCADAS. You can monitor any kind of results while measuring.

In case the measurement conditions are more challenging, you can also measure without a PC. The Simcenter SCADAS acts in a stand-alone mode, and all data is locally stored on a Compact Flash card. The start and stop of the measurement can be controlled via a button on the Simcenter SCADAS or via trigger lines.
But that’s not all. You can also get more measurement insights via Simcenter Testlab Control. This app runs on an Android-based tablet. It wirelessly communicates with the Simcenter SCADAS Recorder. This it allows you to start/stop measurements and monitor all channels, including the wheel forces. Now, you can easily perform track-side validation in-between two measurements. All this without the need of a PC.

At last, it’s important to mention that the Simcenter SCADAS SCM-WFI2-KR module also protects previous investments. As it not only digitally interfaces to the Kistler KiRoad Performance, but also to its predecessor, the Kistler RoaDyn® 2000.

I’m fully convinced that you, as a customer, will benefit a lot from the Simcenter SCADAS module SCM-WFI2-KR and experience the simplified testing process with increased efficiency.

Are you interested in the latest tips how to perform vehicle durability testing campaign?

Here is a webinar to check out: Efficient road load data acquisition