Digatron’s DCA (Dynamic Charge Acceptance) Tester
Wednesday, 23 June 2021
All-In-One Solution For DCA Testing Of Lead Batteries
The exhaust legislation forces car manufacturers to save every gram of CO2 emissions. For small and mid-range cars, the fleet-wide introduction of micro-hybrid concept helps save CO2 without significant investments into expensive technology. The car will save energy through the start-stop function of the combustion engine and brake energy recovery. During recuperation phases, the battery of the vehicle should accept load pulses on concise terms. A measure to evaluate the quality of a battery to allow micro-hybrid load pulses is called “Dynamic Charge Acceptance” or DCA. It is standardized in the European standard EN 50342-6.
Although this procedure has been standardized, it is still very complicated and not easily manageable due to different preconditions like – IF/THEN/ELSE branching and total testing time of 2 weeks. Digatron supports OEMs and battery manufacturers in managing the testing effort and complexity by offering a DCA testing package.
DCA testing is done best with the Digatron UBT-RE tester. It supports a high package density by offering 6 channels per module. Nevertheless, Digatron supports DCA testing also for all former Digatron equipment as well as an add-on to the existing range of equipment.
The DCA package consists of :
- DCA program for Battery Manager 4(BM4) supporting DCA testing according to EN 50342-6 as well as the Ford run-in test.
- A key-off resistor assembly to efficiently simulate the load of the board-net during standstill phases.
- A calculation sheet to calculate the correct resistor value according to the EN standard.
- Recommended testing hardware – UBT-RE equipment.