Improve Your Testing Productivity
Automotive NVH Data – Worth its Weight in Gold!
Do you regard automotive NVH data management as an increasingly hopeless task? Has data ever been lost, have you had to ask a colleague who did what, or even had to make a new measurement because the original data could not be authenticated? Is data lost when a person leaves or changes his job? If so, then help is at hand!
Within the automotive industry, when it comes to NVH testing, evaluation and simulation, it’s not uncommon for each individual or department to handle highly-valuable data in their own different ways. With the growing trend for test data to be shared across the company, with suppliers, and even with other manufacturers, it is vital that standard test setups are used and the resulting data stored methodically so it’s easily accessed, and you can compare results.
Better Data Management
No matter how fast you make your measurements, if your data management is inefficient then your data acquisition and post-processing productivity will be low! Data handling not only covers storing and retrieval, but also such tasks as performing calculations and instantly making reports.
And this is the way the automotive industry is going. With an ever-increasing amount of complex data to be managed, discipline and standardisation will become even more essential.
Data Management is Standardised
For example, the German Association for Standardisation of Automation and Measuring Systems – Open Data Service (ASAM-ODS), specifies service interfaces that can be used by any component of the testing environment to store and/or retrieve data. The main objectives are to reduce costs and risks, and to provide efficient data management. Benefits:
- ASAM-ODS is platform independent and open
- Data from systems from different vendors can be compared in one environment
Brüel & Kjær’s automotive vision is to enable our customers to handle targets – for components, systems and full vehicles, for manufacturers and their suppliers. Therefore, having studied ASAM-ODS closely, it is Brüel & Kjær's intention to become a member, and it is committed to working with ASAM-ODS and the global automotive industry to ensure the realisation of the initiative.
PULSE™ Data Acquisition and Analysis Platform
With constantly increasing pressure to be more productive and cost-effective, while producing ever more sophisticated and refined vehicles, Brüel & Kjær’s NVH and structural dynamic testing tools complement the automotive industry’s rapid development processes. Whether it’s powertrain, exterior or interior vehicle, chassis NVH testing, in a test-cell, on the test track, verification of models, benchmarking, troubleshooting or target setting, all our NVH solutions use the PULSE data acquisition and analysis platform. This provides efficient, innovative and user-friendly vibroacoustic tools needed for powerful NVH testing.
Make Data Management Enhance Productivity
Managing your data involves documenting your data so there is a record of what was measured (Test Object), how it was measured (Test Setup), and any other relevant information such as the person who performed the measurement, transducers used and their calibration history, or even videos, pictures, PowerPoint presentations, etc. This information is known collectively as meta-data (data about data). If your data is properly labelled, you can retrieve it, sort it, share it, compare it, post-process it, and repeat it.
An Integrated Solution
You do not need corporate decisions to start using PULSE Data Manager. It is modular and scaleable – from one or few users and groups, to many people or departments, each with their own preferred setup. PULSE Data Manager is a family of data management solutions that enables measurements to be labelled and saved to an industry-standard database. The measurement data can then be retrieved intuitively for display, comparison or reporting using a range of intuitive query options. The software can run independently, or from within PULSE, and integrates with other PULSE applications.
A relational database allows the data to be stored with features that are repeated in various data sets, assigned to tables in the database. The database is then structured so that repeated information is not stored for each database entry. Instead, it is stored once and referenced by all the data sets to which it applies, and this dramatically reduces the space needed for data storage. Using a database also has the advantage that you can combine old and new data sets into reports, comparing and illustrating exactly what you need and eliminating the need for large paper archives of reports.
Reporting is also a simple matter. You can simply ‘drag and drop’ directly into the GCX display, copy and paste into Microsoft® Word and Excel templates, or by fully automated report generation.
Your reports remain live, allowing you to use the cursors and change the display attributes.
But most importantly, it’s easy. Easy to use, easy to install and configure – PULSE Data Manager can be up and running on the same day as it is received.
Data Validation
Data and reports must be guaranteed, traceable and authentic. A record must be kept, with the test data, of who measured, analysed, reported, and who approved. This information is automatically saved with the dataset.
A Bright Future
In tomorrow’s fast-paced engineering environment, everyone will want more and more data! Today, it’s easy to collect thousands of data points – a few microphones here, a handful of accelerometers there, a tachometer and a variety of related parameters are just the start. Multiply these data points by twenty different test configurations, and before you know it you have a gigabyte of data!
But, realising that having a mountain of disorganised data does not maximise its value, Brüel & Kjær has introduced a solution to help you turn the data into information which leads to knowledge, and increased testing productivity.
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