Automatic Test Equipment Research Articles

Thermal runaway hazard characteristics and influencing factors of Li‐ion battery packs under high‐rate charge condition

SUMMARYIn a special environment such as a high‐rate charge or discharge one, the positive and negative electrode materials of a lithium ion battery may undergo a chemical exothermic reaction with an electrolyte and a binder and release a large amount of heat to cause thermal runaway, resulting in harmful consequences. In this paper, high‐rate charging experiments of different types of 18650 Li‐ion battery packs were performed to study the behavior and influencing factors of Li‐ion battery packs when thermal runaway occurred. Automatic test equipment with battery comprehensive parameters was adopted, and a Li‐ion battery thermal runaway test device was designed and used to test a series of Li‐ion battery packs under high‐rate charging conditions. The series of tests were conducted under different conditions of different cell spacing, pick‐up point positions and connection modes. Results showed that under the above three different conditions, the initial time and the initial temperature of the thermal runaway of the Li‐ion battery packs, the maximum temperature of thermal runaway and the position where the first thermal runaway battery occurred showed some regular changes.

MONITORING RESEARCH OF FIELD SOIL MOISTURE TO PROVIDE IRRIGATION MANAGEMENT ON THE BASE OF AN EXPERIMENTAL AND CALCULATION METHOD

The article highlights the actual problems of monitoring studies of soil moisture and meteorological indicators for informational support of irrigation management systems. On the basis of literature analysis it is shown that soil moisture control can be carried out both directly on the results of soil moisture measurements and using calculated methods. In the presence of automatically obtained meteorological forecasting data, irrigation decisions are made using an experimental calculation method. Monitoring studies are part of the experiment and are used as feedback in soil moisture control.
 The purpose of the work is to develop an information component of soil moisture monitoring and meteorological indicators in the field to ensure a proper decision-making regarding irrigation by the experimental-calculation method.
 Soil moisture measurement is recommended using a variety of soil moisture sensors by indirect methods of determination. Various tensiometers, dielectric and resistive sensors can be used as sensors. They provide the feedback for irrigation management. The calculation part consists of the decision criterion for the beginning of irrigation, the balance method of calculating soil moisture or moisture reserves in the soil (or a multilayered mathematical model of moisture transfer in the presence of sufficient input parameters for that) using automatic meteorological forecast.
 The article is illustrated by the results of a laboratory model experiment and field research with automated measurement data transmission and feedback implementation in soil moisture control. The model laboratory experiment was used to test the design, technical and technological parameters of the equipment for automatic monitoring and testing of the experimental-calculation method. Practical forecasts, calculations and data acquisition of soil moisture and meteorological indicators for the implementation of feedback during the irrigation management are considered based on the example of a corn field in one of the experimental farms.
 The results of the laboratory experiment and field studies show the effectiveness of predicting soil moisture by this method. Monitoring data of soil moisture and meteorological indicators is the feedback. They are automatically transmitted and improve the accuracy of irrigation recommendations and allow for quick adjustments to forecast calculations. It is recommended to make daily soil moisture correction for direct automated field measurements using ground sensors.
 Further research in this area is to use one-dimensional multilayer models of moisture transfer. They provide accurate results but require more input parameters.

Built-in self test of high speed analog-to-digital converters

Signals found in nature need to be converted to the digital domain through analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) to be processed by digital means [1]. For applications in communication and measurement [2], [3], high conversion rates are required. With advances of the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology, the conversion rates of CMOS ADCs are now well beyond the gigasamples per second (GS/s) range, but only moderate resolutions are required [4]. These ADCs need to be tested after fabrication and, if possible, during field operation. The test costs are a very significant fraction of their production cost [5]. This is mainly due to lengthy use of very expensive automated test equipment (ATE) to apply specific test stimuli to the devices under test (DUT) and to collect and analyze their responses.

Application of Phase-Reversal Fresnel Zone Plates for Improving The Elevation Resolution in Ultrasonic Testing with Phased Arrays.

Currently, phased arrays have found wide application in ultrasonic nondestructive testing. Volumetric results provided by the inspections with linear phased arrays have low lateral resolution in the elevation direction of such probes. This fact complicates the defects characterization task. In this paper, we suggest the application of the Phase-Reversal Fresnel Zone Plate to increase the resolution of volumetric imaging with linear phased arrays. Application of such plates is aimed at ultrasonic focusing in the elevation plane whereas focusing on the active aperture plane is provided by the application of the Sampling Phased Array. Furthermore, the use of the Phase-Reversal Fresnel Zone Plate is advantageous due to the capability of its 3D printing and introduction to the existing automated testing systems avoiding making changes to the current software and hardware. The effectiveness of the plates was verified experimentally on the existing automated testing system. The obtained experimental results demonstrate that the application of the Phase-Reversal Fresnel Zone Plate allowed achieving the results of the higher resolution as well as improving the signal to noise ratio.

A Fast and Efficient Measurement System for Nuclear Spin Relaxation Times in Atomic Vapors.

With the rapid progress of cutting-edge research such as quantum measurement technology, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) gyroscopes represent a major development direction of high-precision micro-miniature gyroscopes, which have significant advantages such as high precision, small size, and low power consumption. It is meaningful to measure the relaxation times of noble-gas atoms which are crucial indicators to accurately and quickly characterize the vapor cell performance as a core component of gyroscopes. In this paper, a test platform for relaxation time is built and an automatic relaxation time test system based on free induction decay (FID) and the π pulse method is designed to accelerate the relaxation time test. Firstly, the formula of the atomic dynamic process based on the Bloch equation was deduced, a GUI (Graphical User Interface) simulation based on the derived differential equation was conducted, and the moving process of the magnetic moment was visually described. Then, the virtual instrument was used to integrate multiple test instruments into an auto-test system, and LabVIEW programming was used for control to realize the automation of the test process on the test platform. Finally, the test results in different conditions were compared. The results show that the test system is stable and reliable with excellent man–machine interaction, and the measurement efficiency was increased by about 185%, providing an effective test scheme for vapor cell performance.

Output-based Intermediate Representation for Translation of Test-pattern Program

An Intermediate Representation (IR) used by compilers is normally generated statically , as a result of parsing or analyzing the source program. This paper proposes a completely different type of IR, generated as a result of running the source program, the output-based IR . There is a practical translation problem where such an IR is useful, in the domain of test-pattern programs . Test-pattern programs run on ATE (automatic test equipment), a special embedded system to test semiconductors such as DRAMs. They generate a pattern for each clock, a bit vector input to the pins of the chip. One issue is that different ATEs require different programming since each ATE manufacturer has its own programming language. Nonetheless, we should be able to test a memory chip on different ATEs as long as they generate the same patterns with the same speed. Therefore, a memory chipmaker wants to make a pattern program portable across ATEs, to fully utilize their ATE resources. One solution is translating between pattern programs, for which we need an IR since there are multiple source ATEs and target ATEs. Instead of a conventional, static IR, we propose using the output pattern itself as an IR. Since the pattern is independent of ATEs and easily obtainable, the output-based IR obviates designing a static IR considering all ATE programming languages and hardware differences. Moreover, we might synthesize a better target program from the IR, more optimized to the target ATE. However, the full pattern generated by a product-level pattern program is huge, so we propose using an IR of abbreviated patterns, annotated with the repetition information obtained while executing the source program. Our experimental results with product-level pattern programs show that our approach is feasible.

An Automated Testing Method for PXI Chassis Software Driver

PCI extensions for instrumentation (PXI) chassis is a multi-vendor interoperable device. It can interconnect with many chassis, module and computers. To make sure a device driver is able to function in a specific configuration, it must go through a series of tests. The complexity of PXI software testing has increased when it needs to cover multiple configurations for a single driver. Majority of the automated test systems will execute tests without having the mechanism to verify the test environment. To improve the PXI chassis driver test duration, the current trend of automated software testing only executes a single test configuration. Thus, an automated test software with the capability to execute multi-test configuration is required. In order to develop this tool, a server-client concept is adopted. The advantage of server-client is to centralize the testing when multiple tests are performed. The software tool client will start once it is booted into the operating system; the test system will connect to server and wait for further action from server. When server detects incoming client connection, it will automatically verify and fix the testing environment; if the client fulfills the test suite requirement it will start to execute the test system. All client test summary results will be updated to the server. The results show an average of 17.1% test duration reduction on the planned test configuration when the automated software tool is applied on testing. Besides, the results indicate higher controller hardware performance can reduce the test duration.

Automatic test system for pFEB and sFEB mass production

Abstract This paper presents an automatic test system(ATS) for the pad front-end board(pFEB) and strip front-end board(sFEB) of ATLAS small-strip Thin Gap Chamber(sTGC) detector. The pFEB is designed to readout signals of pads and wires of sTGC detector, and the sFEB is designed to readout signals of strips of sTGC detector. There will be thousands of pFEBs and sFEBs produced in mass production (including spare p/sFEBs), and all of them must pass the quality tests before delivery. To reduce the time and man power cost of the quality tests, we developed this automatic test system for mass production tests of p/sFEBs. The test system consists of a FEB Test Board(FTB), a Test Pulse Board(TPB) and a control software. The FTB connects with p/sFEB through mini-SAS cables and communicates with the control software through Gigabit Ethernet. The TPB injects external test signals to p/sFEB through GFZ. The control software provides several interfaces to set configuration parameters for p/sFEB and controls the test processes. The FTB sends configuration data to p/sFEB, and then readouts data from the them. The output data includes 4.8Gbps trigger data, 640Mbps level-1 event data, and so on. They are analyzed in FTB and then sent to the control software. The test system can automatically scan main functions and performances of p/sFEB, including channels performances, the configuration chain, the data chain, the trigger chain, etc. The specific characteristics and implementations are described in detail.

Nondestructive testing method and application for internal defect of metal balls

ABSTRACTNondestructive testing for internal defects is necessary owing to the extensive application of metal balls in different industrial fields. The flat-bottom holes (FBHs) are used as the reference standards for the detection of internal defects. An ultrasonic measurement model with spherical-focused transducer based on multi-Gaussian beam is proposed to describe the detection of FBHs inside the metal ball. The comparison between the predicted signals and the pulse-echo responses of FBHs is given to certify the accuracy of the model. The distance-amplitude-correction (DAC) curves are provided to evaluate the equivalent size and depth magnitude of the defects inside the balls. The experimental results indicate that the model can predict and evaluate the internal defects accurately and efficiently. Finally, the method of spiral fully unfolding of ball surface based on orthogonal clamping is developed and successfully applied to the automatic ultrasonic testing system for internal defects of bearing balls combining with the model-based DAC curves.

Development of advanced automated test equipment for digital system by using FPGA

One of the fundamental devices in electronics, Integrated Circuit (IC), is usually applied in more complex devices. Before the IC is used, it has to pass some tests to guarantee that its function is in accordance with the specifications. Automated Test Equipment (ATE) is used to test many electronics devices, including ICs. Nowadays, with the rapid advance in electronics technology, the industry will need more advanced ATE to fulfill customers demand. One of the applicative solutions is improvement and integration of a standalone module in commercial ATE owned by the company. ASL 1000 Test System is one of the ATE that is still widely used in industry. ASL 1000 has one limitation in one of its module, Digital Driver and Detector (DDD). The limitation is how much vector pattern that can be saved in the memory. Based on the observation in DDD instrument, a standalone module that has similar specifications as DDD can be designed using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) as its base component. In the standalone module plan, supporting circuits are used, these are interface circuit between FPGA and PC using RS-232 and ASIC as ATE drivers or comparators to connect FPGA and device under test (DUT). The result of the study shows that the designed module can receive and send 8-bit data at 19.200 baud rate. It can write and read 16-bit data from and to SDR SDRAM within 90 ns and 80 ns for one cycle. It can control DAC type AD5308 in standalone operation and DAC type AD5676 in daisy chain operation to generate specific voltage in specific channel. In behavioral simulation, main controller module has already worked in accordance with the desired specifications.

Data collection for disconnected diagnostics in a net-centric environment

Automated Test Equipment (ATE) is an integral tool in the arsenal of the Fleet Marines performing maintenance on ground weapon systems. An essential output of that tool is the test configuration and diagnostic data generated during the testing event. Historically, collecting and transforming diagnostic data into meaningful and actionable information has been a challenge for the Marine Corp's Automated Test Equipment Program (ATEP). The ATEP's position is that diagnostic data generated during testing can provide valuable fault history data, streamline the maintenance process, and ultimately lead to the development of a predictive maintenance capability.

President's message: Welcome to IEEE AUTOTESTCON 2019

Greetings and welcome to the Instrumentation and Measurement Magazine special edition on AUTOTESTCON. AUTOTESTCON 2019 will be held again at the Gaylord National Convention Center in the National Harbor, Maryland near Washington, DC. It is a great facility and a fitting location for a conference that uniquely attracts Instrumentation and Measurement researchers, practitioners, industry, and government agencies involved in automated test systems. The selected papers from AUTOTESTCON 2018 for this issue show the range of interesting and useful discussions which occur at the conference.

Kinetics Modelling of Batch Anaerobic Co-digestion of Domestic Primary Sewage Sludge and Food Waste in a Stirred Reactor

Anaerobic digestion was conventionally applied for treating sewage sludge. However, the accumulation of solid waste particularly food waste has reach the critical levels worldwide. In practice, the food waste was dumped into the landfill for ultimate disposal. However, the greenhouse gases produced in the landfill makes this is no longer a preferable option. Anaerobic digestion was seen as an alternative for managing the food waste in a sustainable way. Methane, a renewable energy is potentially in replacing fossil fuel. However, the methane yield from the digestion of food waste inefficient. Therefore, a study of the co-digestion of sewage sludge and food waste was conducted to investigate the improvement of the methane yield. This study was conducted by using a mixture of domestic primary sewage sludge and food waste as a co-substrate for the anaerobic digester. The kinetics modified Gompertz modelling was applied to describe the anaerobic digestion process. A series of batch biochemical methane potential (BMP) assay was prepared using Automatic Methane Potential Test System (AMPTS II) to investigate the anaerobic digestibility of the mixture of domestic primary sewage sludge and food waste. The BMP assay showed that the co-digestion improved the ultimate methane yield by 32.6% higher than domestic primary sewage sludge alone, indicated that the co-substrate characteristics influencing the methane yield. Besides that, the greater VS/TS ratio of the substrate also resulted in the greater methane yield. The kinetics parameter from the modelling analysis were slightly lower as compared to the laboratory data.

Automated Test System for Test and Evaluation of C-Band Transmitter Packages for Geosat Spacecrafts

The aim of this paper is to develop an Automated Test System (ATS) for the Test and Evaluation of C-Band Transmitter packages for GEOSAT Space crafts using Virtual Instrumentation. Efficiency, coverage, quality and accuracy for the test and evaluation of Device Under Test (DUT) can be increased by Automated Testing. Minimizing the errors anticipated with manual intervention. Automated Test System using Virtual instrumentation (VI) combines rapid development software and modular, flexible hardware to create user-defined test systems. Here Modular PXI (Peripheral component interface Extensions for Instrumentation) instruments from National Instruments are used with NI-LabVIEW software for realizing the ATS. For characterizing the C-Band Transmitter, Spectrum analyzer & Digital Multimeter (DMM) is configured in PXI form-factor and the Power supply is controlled through GPIB (General Purpose Interface Bus) bus. The complete software is developed using NI LabVIEW which takes care of configuring the test condition and analyzing the DUT performance. The user friendly GUI well takes care of user interaction to the ATS.

Effect of Particulate Disintegration on Biomethane Potential of Particle-Rich Substrates in Batch Anaerobic Reactor

An investigation of particle disintegration was carried out using batch anaerobic reactors and a particle-rich substrate from pig manure supernatant. Two types of samples were applied, one high in suspended particles (raw feed) and another low in suspended particle content (centrifuged feed). Both feeds were digested with and without cellulase enzyme addition to obtain a better understanding of particle degradation mechanisms. An automatic methane potential test system (AMPTS) was used to carry out batch reactions at 35 °C. The raw feed with high-suspended solids had higher biomethane potential than the centrifuged feed but the conversion rate and methane yield was lower. The addition of cellulase increased biomethane production rates in both high- and low-particle content samples enhancing yield by 54% and 40%, respectively and converting 69% and 87% of feed chemical oxygen demand (COD), respectively. This implies that the feed particles have high contents of cellulose. This is also the case for the smaller particles remaining after centrifugation. Comparisons of anaerobic digestion model no. 1 (ADM1) simulations with experimental data reveal that classifying substrate particles into a fast and a slow degrading fraction with separate disintegration kinetics fit the experimental data better than lumping all particles into one parameter.

Measurement applications in Industry 4.0: the case of an IoT–oriented platform for remote programming of automatic test equipment

<p><span lang="EN-GB">A laboratory regarded as a site that collects IoT devices, and which allows remote clients to use them as an automatic test equipment (ATE) through a controller acting as service provider, is proposed herein. To assure efficiency and responsiveness, the controller is programmed as a multithreading system that takes advantage of multicore processors. The controller includes a server application that supports communication with clients by means of a TCP/IP protocol. It uses GPIB bus functionalities to control the instruments of the local ATE. It allows several clients to connect and interact with the specific resources of the laboratory. Thanks to the availability of identical sets of resources and to the underlying multithreading philosophy, client requests are processed in tandem rather than according to a classical queuing approach.</span></p><p><span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></p>

Optimization Scheduling of Electric Energy Meter Automatic Testing System

Recent years, the wide application of intelligent energy metering in smart grid leads to the increasing demand for intelligent energy meters. Automated, industrialized large-scale verification systems are widely constructed in important local power supply companies to increase the intelligent energy meter verification ability. The optimization scheduling of verification system utilizing the advanced optimization scheduling method is a necessity to improve verification efficiency. With this regard, considering the block of multi-function verification device caused by unqualified verification result, a model based on the robust optimization method is proposed to minimize the total verification time and improve the verification work efficiency. Deterministic transformation is illustrated to solve the model. The accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed optimization model are verified in simulation results and actual operation.

The signal-oriented test system model of automated test systems and its identification technology

In order to improve the test capability of automated test systems to deal with complex systems, the concept of a signal-oriented test system model was proposed to guide the design of test systems and the implementation of test work and to analyze the test results. First, a method for establishing signal-oriented test system model is proposed, which is based on IEEE 1641 standard, and combined with the unit under test requirements and test objectives. Second, corresponding verification methods are proposed in the mathematical domain and signal domain. Finally, a verification method based on gene expression programming algorithm is designed to verify the complex signal-oriented test system model. In addition, the battery charge regulator module of the NS2 satellite verified the effectiveness of the signal-oriented test system model. Compared with the traditional identification method, the identification accuracy of the simple system (with mathematical model) has been significantly improved; for complex systems (no mathematical model), the traditional method is difficult to work, and the gene expression programming algorithm still has a good effect. The actual verification shows that the signal-oriented test system model, which combines the advantages of the mathematical model and the physical model, can well represent the testing requirements of the complex system.

Justification of the selection of guides for automated test equipment

Justification of the selection of guides for automated test equipment

FPGA Based Low Cost Automatic Test Equipment for Digital Circuits

DOI: 10.26650/electrica.2018.28093 Testing of digital circuits is a crucial problem. There are two types of Automatic Test Equipment (ATE): Very precise but complex and expensive test equipments called high-end ATE and their approximate but cheap alternatives called low-end ATE. In this paper we propose a very cheap, FPGA based embedded low-cost ATE (ELATE) that is capable of functional, speed/delay and power consumption tests. It is composed of FPGA hardware with six FSM modules written in Verilog and a computer software (user interface) communicating with the FPGA through UART. It can handle different I/O combinations and can detect delay with 4ns precision. It can both visually show the resultant voltage/current-time graphs and store them as text files. The ATE is tested on different Design Under Test (DUT) devices like 8-bit and 12-bit adders and a square root circuit implemented on FPGA. Cite this article as: Bayrakci AA. FPGA Based Low Cost Automatic Test Equipment for Digital Circuits. Electrica, 2019; 19(1): 12-21.