EGR 450 Project Final Report:  Crash Barrier Control Project

Overview

The purpose of this project was to control a hydraulically powered system for impacting and testing bumper systems.  These impacts help determine crash worthiness of a bumper system or a proposed change to a bumper system.  The hydraulics retract a large cylinder with a pulley on the end.  Around the pulley is a metal cable connected to a "trolley" on a single row of railroad-style track.  The trolley has a lever which connects to the crash vehicle.  With the trolley connected to the car, the pressure up, and the system activated the vehicle speeds toward a rigid wall.  On the wall is mounted load cells and a deflection measurement device.  These are necessary bits of data necessary for determining whether or not the bumper system will pass the requirements pressed upon it.

• My only concern was to gain better control over the cylinder that pulls the car. My desire was to implement some sort of PID control loop based on the velocity of the cylinder recorded by an angular encoder.  I also hoped to use a Windows base program called LabTech to control the cylinder.  This program works in conjunction with a Digital-to-Analog;Analog-to-Digital (D/A;A/D) computer board.  With the encoder wired to an A/D input and the valve controller wired to a D/A output, I can use the LabTech program to implement a control system utilizing a PID equation.