Custom Data Acquisition Platforms

The AMS Time Events Analyzer (TEA) System is a prime example of AMS capabilities for custom data acquisition. A nuclear power plant had an old, antiquated, time event paper recorder that was used for performing an emergency safeguards sequencer response time test. The legacy plant system was unsupported by the manufacturer and was a potential single point vulnerability during outages. AMS was able to replicate the functionality of the system using upgraded, modern hardware and provided software to automate the data collection and analysis, greatly reducing system complexity and providing substantial time savings during the outage.

Another example of a custom data acquisition system would be the Control Element Drive mechanism (CEDM) Diagnostic equipment designed by AMS for Combustion Engineering plants. AMS developed the CEDM diagnostic system in response to aging and obsolescence issues with the current generation of CEDMs, system controls, cables, and connectors. These types of issues have led to failures which have caused reduced plant loads, reactor shutdowns, and manual or automatic reactor trips with the potential to result in millions of dollars of lost revenue.

In the past, very little diagnostic data was available in the event of a failure which left the plant with very little direction on where to begin troubleshooting activities. AMS worked with the plants to develop a solution for this issue in the CEDM Diagnostic equipment. The system is designed to connect to existing test point signals during all modes of plant operation and provide automated monitoring, fault detection, and diagnostics to classify system failures, trend important parameters, log abnormal events, and localize faults.