Mobile acquisition system checks out brake noise

Mobes is a novel system for the automated mobile data acquisition and analysis of brake noise.

For automotive engineers, brake noise provides valuable information about the status and the behaviour of the complete braking system.

Therefore, brake noise analysis is an important part of the development and testing.

As quite a lot of experience is needed for an objective evaluation of brake noise, most of these investigations have been performed "manually" in the past.

Now, for the first time - initiated and supported by the development departments of BMW and VW - a system for the automated mobile data acquisition and analysis of brake noise has been realised: Mobes.

Mobes integrates the complete signal conditioning, data acquisition and PC hardware in one compact unit which was especially designed to meet the specific requirements of mobile brake testing.

The system provides up to eight pre-amplifiers with an integrated ICP sensor supply and 10-pole lowpass filters for the connection of microphones and accelerometers.

Thus, all four wheels can be examined in parallel.

In addition, eight thermocouple inputs (type K) for the temperature measurement of the brake discs and the brake fluid are available, as well as eight analogue and 16 digital inputs for the acquisition of other vehicle and environmental parameters.

Two CANbus interfaces can be used for further data input from the vehicle.

Mobile testing can be interrupted and continued at any time.

An automatic and controlled system shutdown is performed whenever the ignition is turned off.

The software continuously checks all relevant status parameters like system temperature, free disk space, power source and ignition switch and reacts appropriately.

Thus, Mobes is also highly suitable for long-term and fleet testing.

All recorded data is available for further evaluation, eg on a laptop PC.

An extended analysis software package is provided for this purpose, including special noise detection algorithms which have been developed by BMW and VW, which is now available under license for Mobes users.

All data and results are stored in a database, which can be individually configured, enabling a systematic review at any time.

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