19. Distributed Acquisition and Processing Network for Experimental Vibration Testing of Aero-Engine Structures

Detailed vibration testing of large assembled structures, such as aeroengines, leads to significant requirements on data acquisition and processing. This can lead to high system cost and long post processing times, which often limit the amount of data that can be acquired. A novel hardware-software acquisition system combination is proposed here to overcome some of the challenges of large scale data acquisition, based on the idea to distribute the acquisition and data processing load between a network of specialized acquisition nodes. The nodes work in parallel and are independent of each other, while sharing a synchronization clock. Each node has the capability to process the data being acquired on-line. The network allows for testing of novel data analysis methods and its modular nature enables an easy expansion of the system when required.