Field testing in the automotive industry

Field testing: how we worked with an Automotive Industry field testing one of their products

One of the wide range of sectors of the automotive industry we have worked is heavy plant manufacturing.

Here’s an example of how we field tested transmission modifications for heavy earth moving equipment for one of our customers.

To carry out this work with the customer, we needed to set a datum of how the current system performs.

So our first task was to advise the customer on how they were going to measure this performance; what needed to measured and where to place the sensors. We then carried out the installation of strain gauges along with the data acquisition system to collect the measured data.

We then worked with the customer taking the vehicle though a typical performance cycle on the test track, capturing the data throughout the cycle. Once the test was finished we helped the customer analyse the data to set a bench mark on the performance of the current system.

At this point the initial modifications were installed on the test vehicle, as there was now a bench mark to test against.

Once the vehicle was in its updated state, we again installed the strain gauges and the data logging system. Once the vehicle was ready to go again we ran it through the typical performance cycle. The new captured data was compared with the bench mark data to measure any performance improvement.

This process continued with further modifications being added, instrumented and tested.

This process allows all possible developments and improvements to be tested and accurately compared, to achieve the optimum performance improvements in the system.