Today we show you the rendering of the new electronic board we designed for the DART engine test bench. It is nothing more than an “advanced” version of the one used for the engine test of the project which was successfully carried out a few weeks ago. So, this new version includes sensors similar to those used previously with the addition, but, of some new features.
Consequently, the electronic board shown will be able to trigger the ignition of the engine remotely and collect fundamental data and information for the continuation and validation of the complete rocket project.
In particular, we will use it to obtain, during the ignition and combustion phase, the following measurements:
- Expansions of the motor surface due to the drastic increase in pressure and temperature
- Variation of external temperature on different points of the surface
- Effective thrust of the engine
Then, once obtained, these data will provide important tools for assessing the safety and reliability of the project.
But, what does the system for acquiring such information consist of? This is organized into five main functional blocks:
- Power management;
- Analog conditioning of the signal coming from the various transducers;
- Digital signal acquisition and processing;
- Management of the test and communication phases with the ground station;
- Power section for triggering the fuses and starting the engine.
In order to work perfectly and to collect all the datas, the system is powered by a 9V battery.
In addition, we can still say that the acquisition / processing and management of the test phases are entrusted to 2 different microcontrollers: the Master that controls the different phases of the test and takes care of the communication with the Ground Station (via Wifi communication module XBEE) and the saving of data; the Slave that deals with the actual sampling of most of the sensors.