Contract Services

The U.S. Navy's TIH program requires long term information reporting and data support. We continuously innovate both processes and technologies to arrive at a product that provides data reporting of unmatched quality more quickly.

The U.S. Navy requires the TIH contractor to provide a list of lowest replaceable units (LRUs), by platform, per technology insertion (TI). In the early days of PDA Engineering’s involvement it was relatively easy to maintain the list in an Excel workbook – it was just a handful of platforms and one TI cycle (TI-16/18). In the contracts for TI-20/22, however, the workbook became unwieldy and it became difficult for PDA to provide accurate data in a timely manner.

We needed to expand the capabilities of our engineering configuration and data management tool. The IPS staff, in close collaboration with the technical staff, identified requirements and worked with the developer to create an end-to-end component-based application that ties engineering and support data together, thereby preserving data integrity throughout the program. Additionally, the data is tagged to facilitate real time data extraction, allowing the IPS staff to create accurate, up to date LRU lists at the push of a button.

Read Our Government IPS Case Study: U.S. Navy Technology Insertion Hardware (TIH)

The Parallel Phase Balancer was created after analysis of the generation and distribution inefficiencies of three phase power, which is used widely as an economical and efficient power system but which suffers from imbalance issues that can result in energy loss, limited capacity, increased fuel consumption and heat, and a shorter operational life of equipment. 

Traditionally, load balancing is static with varied success. The classic solution, an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), provides excellent balancing but has many drawbacks such as decreased efficiency and negative impacts to reliability, availability, size, and weight.

The Parallel Phase Balancer, currently in use on US Navy ships and submarines, provides dynamic load balancing to reduce engineering effort and ensure increased efficiency, increased mean time between failures (MTBF), reduced outages and only a fraction of the negative impacts of a UPS.

Read Our Government Analysis Case Study: Parallel Phase Balancer

PDA Engineering served as the subcontractor to perform and support the evaluation, analysis, and test plan development for a prototype helicopter. The helicopter was small (21 feet) with a composite body, turbo-driven, and had improved blades. It was purported to be able to fly faster and higher than currently available helicopters and might have been invisible to radar.

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PDA Engineering's task was to:

• Evaluate the potential performance of the prototype

• Evaluate and analyze critical factors such as aerodynamics, power, and structure

• Analyze critical components such as the body, tail, rotor, engine, and blades

• Develop a test plan that would verify performance claims and perform initial testing of critical items

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The most expeditious way to initially verify aerodynamics was to run selected tests in a wind tunnel. The prototype helicopter was scanned and digitized, and a 1/7 scale model was generated, built, and tested at a recognized wind tunnel facility at the University of Minnesota. Analysis of the results indicated that some minor changes could be made to the fuselage, and various tail design configurations should be explored. 

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The scaled model was also used to analyze and evaluate potential speed, using the aerodynamic results, weight, blade characteristics, and engine capability. Testing results were used to analyze and evaluate the blades and rotor, and software was used to perform a structural analysis of the helicopter body.

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Reports were generated for the evaluations, analyses, and initial testing, and a test plan was generated for the actual prototype helicopter that included tests to be performed, facilities needed, schedule, and cost. 

Read Our Industrial Analysis Case Study: Prototype Helicopter

The U.S. Navy needed to replace old electronics being used on ship consoles in a foreign military application. PDA Engineering was contracted to help with the upgrade, a project that included integrating a chosen display into the existing console and meeting MIL environment and HMI requirements.

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PDA Engineering accomplished this task by:

• Defining requirements and generating a development plan that included budget and schedule

• Obtaining necessary drawings for the consoles and display

• Performing initial design of the mechanical housing and mounting, electrical interconnect and wiring, and select parts

• Performing analysis of the initial design for thermal/cooling, human machine interface (HMI), and structure to meet shock and vibration requirements

• Updating design, generated documentation, and built a prototype

• Integrating prototype into existing consoles and supported functional testing

• Supporting environmental Design Verification Testing 

• Updating documentation for production build

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After successful testing and integration, PDA Engineering built production units that were installed aboard foreign military ships. A slightly modified design was also developed and installed on U.S. Navy ships.

Read Our Government Design Case Study: Replacement Console Electronics

PDA Engineering was contracted by a Fortune 100 company in the food service industry to automate a food production task in advance of launching a new product. Their current manual process was inefficient, time consuming, and not viable for mass production.   

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The client, having worked with PDA Engineering before, asked us to design a multi-step mechanized assembly line with different modules (steps) that can perform the individual actions required to automate the task and free up the labor hours required by the manual process. PDA Engineering designed solutions that met the very strict specifications and requirements given.

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We engaged the client with an interactive design process that resulted in PDA Engineering building a “Proof of Concept” machine to demonstrate the feasibility of the ideas generated. The machine successfully demonstrated that many of the proposed concepts would work at the mass scale (90 items a minute per assembly) and also exposed concepts that needed improvement before a working prototype could be developed. 

Read Our Industrial Design Case Study: Automating for Efficiency

For a large military computer system packaging program, PDA Engineering developed a production and environmental test equipment and software suite to verify accurately built and fully functional equipment and to fully exercise systems during environmental testing. 

Our test software was developed to run on custom common test carts. The test carts provide all necessary mating equipment interfaces, including many Ethernet interface types, serial, video, audio, discrete, and human machine interface (HMI) functions, using COTS and custom test cables between the test cart and equipment. 

The test software is a state machine running under Linux that uses a database-generated XML test configuration file to custom build a test for virtually any equipment configuration and producing auditable test artifacts. The state machine uses test scripts to exercise specific elements of the hardware and isolate failures quickly to save time in troubleshooting.  The software easily adds stress loads during environmental testing to ensure robust real-world conditions. The test software and the units under test utilize the same Linux operator environment (OE) version that deployed systems use, so our testing also helps find and fix OE issues early in the development process to reduce risk for downstream integrators.

Read Our Government Test Case Study: Test Equipment and Software Suite

An international Fortune 500 electronics and manufacturing company contracted PDA Engineering to develop an electronic assembly testing solution that could speed up the production line, prevent bottlenecks, ensure high levels of quality control, and be housed at the customer's location.  

PDA Engineering produced a standardized tester unit that tests up to twenty unique assemblies simultaneously, ensuring increased production efficiencies and speed compared to traditional testing methods, all while maintaining high levels of quality control. Furthermore, PDA Engineering designed the tester units to future-proof the production line by implementing quick-change adapters that can be swapped to fit new products and assemblies.

The current application of this novel technology continues to help the customer successfully develop market-leading products and obtain year-over-year growth. The technology can be applied to many unique testing situations in a variety of industries. 

Read Our Industrial Test Automation Case Study: Electronic Assembly Testing