Automotive fatigue life monitoring

A new customer had the desire to be able to monitor accrued fatigue damage on their automotive vehicles, after the vehicles had been delivered to their end customer. We were asked if we could help develop a solution.

Using our standard Dragonfly acquisition system, fitted with an optional GPRS modem, we were able to take the rainflow calculation (normally used within our Aurora desktop analysis suite) and adopt it for use in the embedded firmware on the Dragonfly unit.

We then developed a web management interface for the customer to access the setup for each remote monitoring unit. The customer was then able to adjust the fatigue calculation settings for individual channels, and could also choose the period at which each unit uploads its latest results to the server.

The web interface provides vehicle developers with the tools to keep an eye on whether the vehicles are being operated correctly and whether they are suffering from inappropriate warranty claims, helping to reduce unnecessary costs.