Development of a Control Framework for Drill Test Benches
Kurko, Tomi (2014)
2014
Sähkötekniikan koulutusohjelma
Tieto- ja sähkötekniikan tiedekunta - Faculty of Computing and Electrical Engineering
This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2014-08-13
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201407071336
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201407071336
Tiivistelmä
Sandvik Mining and Construction Oy manufactures drill rigs, which are machines used for rock drilling. A drill rig has one or more rock drills that perform the actual drilling. The rock drills are tested in test benches, which are automatic test systems. These drill test benches are used mainly for assuring quality of manufactured rock drills.
In the beginning of the thesis process, Sandvik had project plans on building new drill test benches for testing durability of new rock drill products in the product development stage. Durability testing involves long test runs where test phases are repeated several times. The new drill test benches required a new control system to be developed. The control system is an embedded system consisting of several components, some of which run the Linux operating system. Additionally, a desktop application needed to be developed for creating tests for the drill test benches.
In this thesis a concept of a testing framework is created, which describes conceptually how the automatic tests for the drill test benches are defined and run. Applicability of the concept is analyzed also in a broader context for testing various kinds of systems. An implementation of the testing framework concept for drill test benches is developed, which is the main focus of this thesis. All levels of the control system are described briefly from both hardware and software perspectives. However, the thesis will not go into details of other software components beyond the testing framework since they were not implemented by the author.
The project plans for building new drill test benches based on the new control system were cancelled late in the process of writing this thesis. Therefore, no feedback from production use was received. The control system can, however, be deployed later in new drill test bench projects or when an old drill test bench control system is updated. Based on current assessment, the project has achieved its goals. The new software used for creating tests has better usability than the one used in a previous drill test bench. Maintainability of the control system is also considerably better than in previous drill test benches.
In the beginning of the thesis process, Sandvik had project plans on building new drill test benches for testing durability of new rock drill products in the product development stage. Durability testing involves long test runs where test phases are repeated several times. The new drill test benches required a new control system to be developed. The control system is an embedded system consisting of several components, some of which run the Linux operating system. Additionally, a desktop application needed to be developed for creating tests for the drill test benches.
In this thesis a concept of a testing framework is created, which describes conceptually how the automatic tests for the drill test benches are defined and run. Applicability of the concept is analyzed also in a broader context for testing various kinds of systems. An implementation of the testing framework concept for drill test benches is developed, which is the main focus of this thesis. All levels of the control system are described briefly from both hardware and software perspectives. However, the thesis will not go into details of other software components beyond the testing framework since they were not implemented by the author.
The project plans for building new drill test benches based on the new control system were cancelled late in the process of writing this thesis. Therefore, no feedback from production use was received. The control system can, however, be deployed later in new drill test bench projects or when an old drill test bench control system is updated. Based on current assessment, the project has achieved its goals. The new software used for creating tests has better usability than the one used in a previous drill test bench. Maintainability of the control system is also considerably better than in previous drill test benches.