Junior Capstone Project
The goal of this project was to design, manufacture, and test an air powered, dual cylinder engine. Under general guidelines, we were allowed to create our own design that would be graded later on various performance aspects. Standard project documents such as a bill of materials and Ghant chart were used to keep the team on schedule with deadlines. My team went with a less proven but more intriguing v-shaped design. Each part was made my hand by my team in the machine shop on campus and was primarily made of aluminum (6061-T6). All of our performance goals were met for this project including maximum power output and speed.
Final rendering of my team's design
Detailed view of rotary components
FEA was performed on critical parts of the engine
One unique challenge I faced with this project was the design of the intake/exhaust for our engine. Our design prevented us from using commercial air ports that were readily available because of clearance issues. To prevent a redesign of the whole engine, I opted to design and 3D print this part. The part solved the design problem and performed successfully during testing.
Various designs of the air intake/exhaust (final design on the right)
Live test results were recorded from several test runs and compared to the theoretical performance values. The theoretical values were calculated using various thermodynamic equations using Engineering Equation Solver (EES). This program allowed us to organize and graph our results. The test result values were obtained from the provided testing instrumentation.
Theoretical performance (left) and test performance (right) under different electrical loads
Test run at a maximum operating speed of almost 2,400 RPM
