Airbag Electronics Test System for Volkswagen

m+p international Mess- und Rechnertechnik GmbH recently won a $ 400,000 project for the engineering and supply of an airbag electronics test system at Volkswagen, Wolfsburg, Germany. The test system is based on the m+p international's VibControl software solution and an UNHOLTZ-DICKIE CORP. SA60-LS20 5,500 lbf/20 in long-stroke thruster.

Airbag electronics have to control more than 20 different ignition circles for all the airbags and belt tighteners used in a Volkswagen car today. In addition to generating crash pulses and controlling the horizontal shaker system, the VibControl solution will include a 32-channel transient recorder system with 1 MHz sampling rate per channel to resolve the ignition voltage time trace continuously during the crash test.

As in all m+p international high-end vibration control and analysis solutions, Agilent VXIbus technology will serve as hardware platform. For the transient recorder a special VXI board supplied by Bustec Production Ltd., Shannon, Ireland will be used. Bustec is one of the most advanced VXIbus equipment manufacturers for data acquisition solutions. They also produce the new VXI embedded controller for the m+p international VibControl product family.

With the realization of the airbag electronics test system, m+p international will continue its successful supply of environmental test systems to Volkswagen which started in 1986 when providing the first vibration control system for the Volkswagen VW van plant in Hanover.