Distributed Data Acquisition System for the Steam Vacuum System of NASA Ames Research Center’s Arc Jet Complex

摘要

A data acquisition system has been designed and installed on the Arc Jet Complex Steam VacuumSystem (SVS) at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California. The SVS is an integral partof the Arc Jet Complex, which simulates the reentry conditions for thermal protective materials. Itprovides the necessary vacuum condition to ignite the arc jet and pumping action to maintain testchamber vacuum during arc jet operation. Without its continued operation and upkeep, the Arc JetComplex would not be able to operate. Due to the forty years of use of the SVS, its performance hasbeen slowly degrading, and it is starting to have difficulty sustaining operations. Although the SVS hasinstrumentation to perform daily operations, in order to perform any meaningful analysis, additionalmeasurements are needed. Trending of daily measurements is vital to analyzing the current system forperformance parameters, failures, and preventative maintenance. The new distributed data system,VECTOR (Vacuum Ejector and Cooling Tower data system for Operations and Records), provides thisand will be invaluable in evaluating and implementing improvements to the system’s physical structure,subsystems, and control.