MTS Series 793 Application - Manual (Page 337)

Trend Process
MTS MultiPurpose TestWare® Data Acquisition Process Descriptions 337
Example You could monitor strain levels in a critical component of the physical specimen.
You could also monitor shock absorber temperatures to ensure that the shock
absorbers do not overheat during a drive test. You can monitor statistical trends to
determine if the response signal matches your expectations.
The data on the selected signal channels are acquired independently on each
channel, and five statistical values (Minimum, Maximum, Mean, RMS, Standard
Deviation) are calculated. Depending on the settings in the Trend process, the
data is stored and processed every x seconds, or when the process’ end terminal
triggers; that is, when a Group process is repeated. The data is then stored to disk
in ASCII text format as tab-separated values and can be read directly by
spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft™ Excel®. The data file is stored in the
Specimen directory.
The data is also sent to the Trend Monitoring application (via a proprietary data
exchange protocol) which displays the statistics on-line and allows for limit
setting during the procedure; limit changes are transmitted back to MPT which
does the actual limits checking.