Eucentre

The Eucentre Foundation, European Center for Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering, deals with training and research on the reduction of seismic risk. The need is to standardize the data acquisition system through a sufficiently general but also robust and flexible support.

Acquisition of Seismic Test Data

The challenge

The Eucentre Foundation, European Center for Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering, deals with training and research on the reduction of seismic risk. The Center is divided into several research areas, among which there are two experimental laboratories for real-scale testing of structures or components, using the largest vibrating platform in Europe.

Since its inception, the Eucentre Foundation has focused on the continuous adaptation of its standards to the most modern technologies of experimentation, acquisition, and analysis of data.

Nevertheless, the continuous internal development of software has soon led to a need for standardization through the use of sufficiently general but also robust and flexible support.

The need was also to reduce the time required for set-up operations of customized data acquisition systems and for checking the test results.

After extensive research on products available on the market, it was decided to adopt iDaq and Easy Datalogger as data acquisition systems.

Dynamic seismic test submitted by Eucentre on a full-scale structure.

The solution

The initial product supplied by T4SM was iDaq, enriched by the two additional components Easy Datalogger and StripChart. iDaq is a configurable and expandable software for the acquisition, visualization, and insertion of data developed internally.

In a first phase, the product was tested according to the specific needs of Eucentre, which also included the use of National Instruments hardware of different generations. iDaq is the only solution that, in addition to supporting the latest acquisition systems (CompactDAQ), allows working with previous generation systems.

A series of possible developments necessary for the complete integration of the software for the functional purposes of the laboratories were subjected.

After some rapid iterations, T4SM has included all the required changes, making available a customized version of the product, complete with all the necessary features.

Benefits and Results

Immediate advantages were found, consisting in the reduction of the times both for the set-up operations of customized data acquisition systems and for the immediate control of the test results.

The gradual introduction of the T4SM systems has also led to a greater standardization of the systems used and to a general leveling of the capabilities of the individual operators translated into greater role interchangeability.

Control room. From the window it is visible the vibrating platform on which the buildings are built in full scale for testing; on the monitors the iDaq interface is displayed.