Bergmans Mechatronics LLC | Combustion Control System

	Combustion Control System > Introduction to Combustion Test Stands

	Introduction to Combustion Test Stands

Combustion test stands are used for evaluating the performance of prototype or experimental combustion devices. These devices include rocket motors, oxy-fuel combustors, industrial flares and burners and gas turbine engines.

The main components of a typical combustion test stand are illustrated at right and are described below.

Component	Functions
Combustion Device	Device in which vigorous chemical reaction occurs between fuel and oxygen to produce a high temperature, and sometimes, high pressure gas
Support Equipment	Hardware necessary to supply, in a controlled manner, fuel and oxygen to the combustion device. This equipment can include fuel and oxygen tanks, valves, pumps, the igniter, etc.
Signal Processing Equipment	Hardware which provides power to actuate support equipment actuators (eg. relays) and amplifies and filters signals from instrumentation (eg. instrumentation amplifiers). This equipment also includes analog to digital (A/D) converters, digital to analog (D/A) converters and digital input and output modules.
Control Logic / Data Processing Hardware and Software	Control Logic: Software which controls the test stand either under manual control from the operator, fully automatically, or some combination of manual and automatic control. Data Processor: Performs filtering and averaging of incoming instrumentation signals and converts signals to engineering units. Both Control Logic and Data Processing functions normally operate on a PC or similar computing platform.
User Interface	The User Interface translates actions from the operator into commands to be processed by the control logic. The User Interface also converts data from the test stand into displays and charts which are readable by the operator. The User Interface is often displayed in a graphical form on a computer display. In this form, the interface is referred to as a Graphical User Interface or GUI.

Components of Typical Combustion Test Stand