Nigel Linden

Nigel Linden is president and owner of ReTest Equipment, Inc. and Linden Consulting. Nigel has over 25 years experience in using servo-hydraulics to test and characterize structures and materials, performing field data acquisition, designing transducers and developing tests. As a world renowned expert in real-time simulation Nigel has worked with virtually all the major automotive OEMs and their tier one and tier two suppliers.

Nigels main areas of expertise are:

• Designing and supervising the build of new test facilities
• Writing equipment specifications
• Building test equipment and performing systems engineering
• Project Management
• Identifying structural or resonant conditions that lead to failure
• Developing a set of field tests that represent customer usage
• Designing transducers to characterize the field environment
• Designing a test system that can reproduce the environment
• Writing software and using existing digital signal processing tools to reduce field data into block profiles or real-time simulation
• Developing and running laboratory based tests to resolve product reliability issues
• Re-engineering product development processes within organizations to more effectively integrate testing
• Using the test lab as a catalyst to transfer data from the end user to the designers desktop

Nigel has a Mechanical Engineering Degree from Birmingham England. In 1980, he joined GKN Technology as an experimental strain analyst, specializing in Photo-elastic Techniques. Once there, he became involved in field data acquisition, designing specialized loadcells for in-vehicle data acquisition. When he left GKN in 1985, he was managing the data-acquisition group, and was responsible for the Remote Parameter Control® (RPC®) systems, performing simulation on a broad range of component tests. In 1985, Nigel became the European RPC consultant for MTS, helping their customers become more effective in simulation testing. Nigel founded the original RPC Users' Group that is now a vital group in North America, Europe and Japan, for the exchange of techniques and ideas. In just over a year, MTS transferred Nigel to Minnesota to head a newly formed team of test consultants at their head-office. During his 10-year tenure with MTS, Nigel was responsible for the consulting work and training classes that MTS performed around the world, helping companies streamline product development using servo-hydraulics. Nigel was a major agent in promoting the "Simulation Revolution" of the 1980's, a time when laboratory testing became a major component of automotive product development; slashing the time it took for OEMs to develop new vehicles.

In 1995, Nigel left MTS to form his own company. Since then, he has performed extensive consulting work for large, well known clients, and he has been providing services to the testing community through ReTest Equipment.

Remote Parameter Control and RPC are registered trademarks of MTS Systems Corporation.

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