Date of Award

2020

Degree Type

Capstone Project

First Advisor

Dr. Bahram Nassersharif

Abstract

The objective of this project, through the team’s sponsor Eaton, was to build a vacuum test system for in production, carbon face seals, with a set list of test specifications. Eaton’s current seal test system effectively and reliably achieves test results, but is antiquated and lacks data acquisition software. The team was tasked with redesigning the system, with a large emphasis on digital data collection and management, but maintaining the reliability and functionality of the current system. To complete this task, the team broke the system up into two subsystems: the vacuum system and the control system/data acquisition. This report has outlined the accomplishments of the team to the current date and the design processes used to reach the current state of the project. To achieve the current status of the project, in-depth literature and patent searches, conceptual design generation, and engineering analysis were completed by the team. Following the concept generation, the team completed a Quality Function Deployment (QFD) comparison, to determine how customer requirements and possible design solutions impacted the final design of the system. The team has made progress in choosing the mechanism for pulling vacuum, analyzing different material choices, and simulating control system operation. Engineering analysis was completed to verify that the chosen concepts would meet the required design specifications set by Eaton. To determine the viability of the vacuum system, Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was conducted on different parts of the system to discover possible mechanical failures. To demonstrate the Proof of Concept (POC) for the control system, two Visual Basic (VB) programs were created. One program represented data collection/exportation, which is an instrumental feature in the final system design. The other program controlled the testing environment through the interface and Arduino. Through the completed design processes, the team believes that the redesigned seal test vacuum system will satisfy all test requirements and provide new features to this system that were not previously available.

Comments

Sponsor: Eaton

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