초록 ▼

A drop height recorder apparatus includes a housing suitable for packaging for shipment from an origin point to a destination point, a triaxial accelerometer provides three signals to corresponding high gain and low gain channels. The three high gain channel signals are full wave rectified to change

A drop height recorder apparatus includes a housing suitable for packaging for shipment from an origin point to a destination point, a triaxial accelerometer provides three signals to corresponding high gain and low gain channels. The three high gain channel signals are full wave rectified to change any negative signals to positive signals for summing into a single high gain “zero G”(free-fall) channel. AN analog to digital converter is connected to the three low gain channels, the single high gain channel, and to auxiliary sensors for digitizing the analog signals. A recorder has a programmable controller connected to the ADC for setting the digital sampling rate. The digitized low gain channel signals are passed through a digital trigger threshold comparator for comparison with a reference signal for generating event detecting trigger signals on the way to a delay memory which also receives the digitized high gain zero G signal and auxiliary signals. In response to a trigger signal the programmable controller reads out of the delay memory preselected numbers of pre-trigger and post-trigger data as an event sample either for a data processing memory for processing the signals for desired information and storage in a storage memory or for a storage memory. A pre-selected number of event waveform signals together with time, date, and auxiliary data signals are stored in the storage memory. After recovery of the instrument, a personal computer can be attached for reading out the stored event waveforms from which the time of free-fall occurring during each event is determined and the drop height in inches computed. The personal computer is used prior to shipment to set the program parameters and operation modes in the programmable controller.

대표청구항 ▼

A drop height recorder apparatus comprising: (a) a housing suitable for packaging for shipment via a transportation source from an origin point to a destination point; (b) a sensor means mounted in the housing and including: a sensor for generating data signals representative of gravitational forces

A drop height recorder apparatus comprising: (a) a housing suitable for packaging for shipment via a transportation source from an origin point to a destination point; (b) a sensor means mounted in the housing and including: a sensor for generating data signals representative of gravitational forces including free-fall, and impact forces; first and second means connected to the sensor for preprocessing, respectively, the gravitational and impact force representative signals, and third means connected to the first and second means for generating digitized data sample signals representative of the impact and gravitational force representative signals; and an event determining means connected to the third means for receiving the digitized impact force signals and producing event triggering signals; and (c) a recorder means mounted in the housing and connected to the sensor means, the recorder means including: a data delay means connected to the third means for storing preselected quantities of the digitized data signals; and a data storage means connected to the data delay means for storing a preselected portion of the digitized signals as event data signals; and a programmable controller connected to: the event determining means, data delay means, and data storage means; the programmable controller being programmed responsive to the trigger signals to transfer from the data delay means to the data storage means preselected portions of pre-trigger and post-trigger digitized data sample signals as event waveforms to the data storage means, for subsequent processing to determine from the event waveforms free-fall events and their free-fall times from which the free-fall drop heights can be computed.