FPGA-based measurement instrument for the ERT applications of aerospace composite materials

Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) is a promising method in many science and technology fields, especially in medical and material technology. This paper aims to introduce an FPGA-based (Field Programmable Gate Array) data acquisition (DAQ) system to create ERT (Electrical Resistance Tomography) for aviation composite material samples. Thanks to the ability to implement individual blocks working in parallel, an FPGA-based system provides a huge advantage in measuring time compared to microcontroller-based systems working in sequence. The whole system is designed using Very high speed integrated circuits (VHSIC) Hardware Description Language (VHDL). Results show that the system can be used for ERT applications in the field of aviation composite materials.