Oil and Gas Valve Test Using LabVIEW and CompactDAQ

Flow_Test

Overview

Oil and Gas Valve Test Using LabVIEW and CompactDAQ. An oil and gas valve manufacturing company needed custom software to control and monitor their flow test stand. They needed software to monitor pressure, position, velocity, and temperature. The customer also needed the software to actuate the valves to control the stand. Data acquired from the stand needed to be saved in an excel format.

Solution

We developed a custom LabVIEW program with NI CompactDAQ hardware to facilitate their needs. CompactDAQ was chosen because it could measure and output multiple types of signals. The software contained a table that displayed all the measured values in real time. We also developed a simple user interface that allowed the operators to simply control and monitor the measurements of interest.

CompactDAQ

CompactDAQ Chassis and Modules

The software supported 2 different test stands. We designed the software to use a configuration file to determine what test stand the software was installed on. This allowed for stand dependent features to be only enabled for the appropriate stand.

The acquired data was populated into a customer defined excel template. This allowed the customer to change how the data was analyzed and displayed without making software code changes.

Features

Manual Control Screen

The manual control screen allowed the operator to manual control the test stand. This screen had the capability to run while the main screen was open.

Manual_Valve_Control

Automatic Valve Control Screen

This is the automatic valve control screen. The states of the valve could changes after a trigger level was exceeded. The user could select the trigger level and trigger channel.

Automatic_Valve_Control

Report Header Dialog

The Report Header Dialog allowed the user to enter part information for the test.

Advanced Options

The Advanced Options dialog allowed the user to set test options. The user could select hardware address, hardware settings, and what column in the report to populate the data.

Advanced Options hardware Setup

This is an example of the strain gauge setup tab. The user can set channel name, units, hardware channel address, strain gauge calibration, and specify the excel column to save the data.

Report

The report was saved into an excel template. Using this method the user could change the excel macros, graphs, and calculations without any LabVIEW code modifications. The data was populated into the columns specified in the advanced options dialog.

Result

Oil and Gas Valve Test Using LabVIEW and CompactDAQ was able to monitor and control the customer's flow test stand. The CompactDAQ hardware was able to accommodate all of the signal types the test stand needed to measure and control. The software was easy and intuitive for the user to operate. The excel report allowed the customer to view and analyze their data. The customer was able to make changes to the excel template and submit the template for regulation compliance.

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