Data acquisition for delayed hydride cracking studies using DCPD technique

Direct current potential drop (DCPD) is a commonly used technique for making measurements on crack propagation in Delayed Hydride Cracking (DHC) studies on materials. It consists of passing a highly stable current ( 5-15A) through a Compact Toughness (CT) specimen of the material subjected to a mechanical load at the requisite elevated temperature, and precisely measuring and tracking the very small voltage developed across two points of specific geometry on it. Though simple in principle, this involves measuring and extracting very small signals from inevitable large spurious signals in a harsh environment, and it requires a high quality data acquisition and analysis system to extract the required information from the experiment