Customer
Our client is a supplier of sanitary equipment (mechanical taps, thermostatic taps, shower columns, etc.), for kitchen, bathroom and shower. It is the market leader in the Nordic countries and the market leader in continental Europe.
Tested product
Electronic control of a solenoid valve (coil)
Coil for controlling the opening of a valve.
Objective
Design and construction of an endurance test bench allowing the testing of 6 products simultaneously. The products are tested in accordance with the EN 15091 standard (Electronically controlled sanitary tap).
Problematic issues
- Enable testing of multiple products simultaneously.
- Be able to generate alternating temperature stress cycles
- Generate water hammer
- Control electrical pulse times to within 0.1ms
- Measure high frequency pressure peaks.
Solution and result
The equipment consists of a test bench with 6 modules and a pressure generator, designed to perform performance and endurance tests on the electronic part of the solenoid valve and thermal cycling tests on cartridges and their components. Each product under test is mounted in a specific tooling, allowing a choice of hot or cold water supply on either side of the supply. The bench is connected to a hot and a cold water inlet. The temperature and pressure generation is done outside the bench by an external module.
The 6 test modules are identical. A static pressure system is common to all 6 test lines.
Each test station is a module equipped with its own hydraulic circuit and an electronic control card, connected to the control PC by an Ethernet link. Each module allows to perform thermal stress tests, water hammer tests, to generate electrical control pulses of the tested product, to measure, at high frequency, the pressure peaks generated by the water hammer.
The software is capable of performing all performance, endurance and temperature cycling tests through simple programming.
