Sandia National Laboratories' Instrumentation capability provides a unique resource to capture highly reliable and NIST-traceable measurements from a variety of sensors at any of the laboratories’ facilities or at external sites.

The instrumentation capability includes two dedicated semi-tractor trailers: the Mobile Instrumentation Unit (MIU) and the Mobile Instrumentation Data Acquisition System (MIDAS).  A third semi-tractor trailer is configured to perform mobile command and control functions with RF and/or hardwire communication links for hazardous applications requiring unmanned operation of the MIU.

 
The instrumentation capability also includes five small portable systems that are capable of mobile deployment to support laboratory or field experimentation.  These systems are contained in a portable VXI crate that can be configured for 32 channels in eight channels per card.  Each channel includes amplifiers, digitizers, bridge signal conditioners, and low pass filters.  Each VXI crate is controlled using software operating on a laptop computer.
Finally the instrumentation capability includes shock-hardened portable systems that are custom designed and fabricated for on-board measurement of sensors in extreme shock environments (i.e., earth penetration, high speed impact, artillery firing, etc).

All of the recorded data is supported by a data analysis and plotting package, “K2”.  K2 is a Sandia developed analysis packaged based on Stearns and David “Signal Processing Algorithms”*.  K2 is an upgraded version of the “KAPP” data analysis plotting package developed by Sandia for use in the MIDAS Instrumentation Trailer.  Data can be supplied to the customer in a variety of formats and a K2 viewer package can be supplied to customers along with the data.

* Published in three versions by Prentice-Hall; Signal Processing Algorithms, (1988), Signal Processing Algorithms in Fortran and C (1993), Signal Processing Algorithms in MATLAB™(1996)

 

Self-Contained Mobile Instrumentation Systems

Portable Instrumentation Systems

Hardened On-board Instrumentation Systems