Design And Realization Of Data Acquisition System For Towing Tank Based On Virtual Instrument Technology

With the development of science and technology, the requirement on measurement technology is getting more and more important. The application of electronic measurement technology has extended to more fields than before. Due to limited functions and big size, traditional electronic measuring equipments are no longer suitable to common purposes. The rapid development of integrated circuit and computer technology gives birth to a new kind of instrument--virtual instrument. Compared with traditional equipment, virtual instrument being introduced into measurement field has greatly enhanced the flexibility and expansibility of measurement.This paper is based on the Digitization and Informationization Project which is carried out by China Ship Science Research Center. To improve efficiency of test in towing tank and to enhance reliability of system, a test system base on virtual instrument technology and LabVIEW has designed and realized.Besides many routine methods for data acquisition and signal processing, some improved applications and innovative designs are used in this test system. The Three-Tiered Structure applied in constructing the test system has optimized the system structure suitably. It is more legible for the function and the flow to build programming frame with Producer-Consumer Design Pattern and Queued Message Handler. The automaticity of system is raised after using communication based on heart-beat checking and multi-threading and intelligentized instrument recognition system. Many skills and innovations, which contain real-time watcher for test, data store with java procedure,logo module design,convenient and flexible configuring and report builder, improve efficiency, reliability, operability and extensibility of the system. The expected requirement on digitization achieve by way of developing the test system.This paper starts with describing the significance to develop the test system for towing tank. The development history of data acquisition system and virtual instrument techno1ogy is reviewed. Afterwards, the theoretic bases of data acquisition, the development methods by LabVIEW and hardware platform for test system are recounted. Then, the general design scheme are emphasized on including software framework, work flow of system and respective function modules. Moreover, the key technologies and skills which is innovated and improved in test system are introduced in details. Lastly, the summarization about the whole paper and the further work are also pointed out.