A high-voltage-isolated automated data acquisition system

A data acquisition system for electric-arc heated, high-temperature wind tunnel facilities has been developed; the high voltage isolation of the system exceeds 50 kV. A closed loop, optically coupled data system acquires transducer signals from high-temperature, arc-generated plasmas used for reentry testing. The data acquisition system monitors on-line tests, stores data on magnetic tape, and prints out a paper tape. The system has 400 data channels: 200 low-voltage programmable channels and 200 high-voltage sequential channels.