Automated Material Testing & Analysis
Brooks R&D Lab
Project Goal
At Brooks, cutting-edge running shoe materials are being tested to gain insight toward their material properties. Specifically, Instron testing machines are used to evaluate the cushioning and flexibility properties of future shoe materials. The results can reveal any necessary changes to the product design which are then discussed with the product developers. Due to the large amount of testing required by the R&D team, efforts needed to be put toward increasing the efficiency of the material testing process through automation.
Challenges
Originally, the material testing process required the researcher to constantly monitor the system and manually process the data. This was mainly due to the outdated software programs that communicated with the Instron machine and the time-intensive process of manually entering data in spreadsheets. The main challenge of this project was incorporating more efficient pipelines that still integrated with the older testing software.
My Solution
Custom MATLAB data-processing scripts were written and implemented into the material testing pipeline. These scripts were able to autonomously identify and select recent data files. The code then extracted relevant data and maximized processing throughput via automation and careful organization of the results. Final results were then exported to a CSV file template that could easily be imported into Tableau Software for further analysis.
Notable Features & Accomplishments
- Custom MATLAB scripts designed for data processing automation and organization.
- Reduction in the amount of time needed to complete the product testing and analysis pipeline by 66%.
- Reported mechanical testing results to a multidisciplinary and cross-functional team for future product development strategies.
Skills Used
- MATLAB
- Testing Protocol Design
- Automation
- Data Processing
- Data Analysis
- Mechanical Testing
- Characterization
- Reliability Testing & Analysis
- Tableau