Software Development For Ash Scanner Based On Virtual Instrument Technology

Virtual instrument is a new instrument, which incorporates computer technologyand instrument technology, and is a breakthrough conceptually upon the traditionalinstrument. The idea of ’software is instrument’ had a large impact on the developmentof testing and measurement instruments. LABVIEW is a graphical programminglanguage introduced by a US company named National Instruments, featuring easylearning, high development efficiency, rich built-in function library, various debuggingmethods and so on, and is known as the programming language for engineers andscientists. Developing virtual instruments by LABVIEW has come into wide use inrecent years, and a lot of application cases can be found in the field of aerospace,electronics, weapons, automation, semiconductor and so on.The technology of monitoring the ash content of coal by dual energy gamma raywas developed by the Engineering Physics department of Tsinghua University since the1980s. An ash content inspection instrument based on the above method, named ’ZZ-89’,has been listed as the key promotion project in the9th5-year plan, and been widelyemployed in coal mining, electricity generation, steel production and so on, andcontributes to the coal energy efficiency. With the fast development of computertechnology and instrument technology, ZZ-89has fell behind, especially its software.The old software was developed in Assembly Language and C Language, and run inDOS system. Required by the programming update and product integration, thesoftware of ZZ-89has to be redeveloped.My thesis project is to redevelop the old software of ZZ-89in LABVIEW, and thenew software will run in windows system, which improves the difficulties of addingnew functioning blocks, function realization, compatibility, bonding with otherinstruments and so on. The new software, which is based on virtual instrumenttechnology, adopt modularized design ideas, so each function module will workindependently and integrated through queue transmission. We adopted the developmentmodel recommended by NI, such as producer&consumer and state machine, whichmakes the structure clear, efficient and robust. The new software includes dataacquisition, computing, data saving, user management, motion control, parameter setting and data query and so on.