Instrumentation and data acquisition system for slamming load test facility

In rough seas a ship can be subjected to tremendous loads due to hydrodynamic impact, or slamming, whereby a high pressure pulse forms on the hull as it hits the water. The Lehigh University Composites Lab has been constructing a boat that will serve as a slamming load test facility to better understand this phenomenon. To quantify these slamming events sensors and a data acquisition system were needed that could both characterize the pressure pulse and the effect of the impact on the boat's structure. The present research details the development, construction and testing of a novel system that measures pressure and strain at high speed from hundreds of locations throughout the boat. Thin film sensors that adhere to the exterior of the boat hull were developed and tested in real world conditions. Hardware was fabricated to log from the instruments in the harsh environment of the slamming load test facility. This system uses off the shelf and custom electronics to record over 15 million samples of data per second. This hardware was installed in the test facility along with a user interface mounted in the rear seat of the cockpit to allow an operator to control measurement while the boat is undergoing tests.