The Tornado16CR™ records triaxial acceleration data using an internal accelerometer package and also has the capability of recording signals from 16 external sensors. It is an extension of SPEC’s Tornado6DOF™ recorder used to record 6-DOF accelerations during an ejection event in a fighter aircraft. The unit is designed for obtaining crash data measurements in the motorsports industry but can be used for any application requiring a small, non-intrusive data recorder for short duration events.

The Tornado16CR™ consists of an internal triaxial accelerometer arrangement, user configurable signal conditioning, controller, EEPROM storage, and optional battery backup. Normally, it is internally triggered on a high acceleration event but it can be externally triggered by a TTL logic signal. Once triggered, the unit samples all nineteen channels simultaneously. To eliminate data time skew, It uses separate analog to digital converters for each channel and samples at a 4 KHz rate to a sample depth of 12 bits. The unit has a 64 Megabit EEPROM for record times up to 65 seconds. The embedded controller provides the necessary intelligence for the unit’s Built In Self Test (BIST), trigger detection, mission control, and data extraction.

The Tornado16CR™ can accommodate a variety of sensor inputs. The data acquisition front end incorporates programmable gain, offset, and post mission filtering characteristics for versatile analog signal conditioning.