Safety

ECE 445 Safety Guidelines

  1. No one is allowed to work in the lab alone. At least 2 people must be in the lab at all times.
  2. Everyone must complete a mandatory online safety training in order to be allowed to work in the lab. Certificates of completion must submitted on Canvas.
  3. Any group planning on working with high voltages is required to complete additional safety training.
  4. Any group charging or utilizing certain battery chemistries must read, understand, and follow guidelines for safe battery usage.
  5. If you're working on any project involving electric current running through a human subject, you must read through and understand these guidelines for Safe Current Limits!

Requirements and Grading

The Laboratory Safety Training must be completed by all students enrolled in ECE 445. This module can be found on University's Division of Research Safety website.

Submission and Deadlines

Certificates of completion must submitted on Canvas. The due date listed on the Course Calendar. Students who have not completed this requirement will have lab access revoked.

Control System and User Interface for Hydraulic Bike

Iain Brearton

Featured Project

Parker-Hannifin, a fluid power systems company, hosts an annual competition for the design of a chainless bicycle. A MechSE senior design team of mechanical engineers have created a hydraulic circuit with electromechanical valves, but need a control system, user interface, and electrical power for their system. The user would be able to choose between several operating modes (fluid paths), listed at the end.

My solution to this problem is a custom-designed control system and user interface. Based on sensor feedback and user inputs, the system would change operating modes (fluid paths). Additionally, the system could be improved to suggest the best operating mode by implementing a PI or PID controller. The system would not change modes without user interaction due to safety - previous years' bicycles have gone faster than 20mph.

Previous approaches to this problem have usually not included an electrical engineer. As a result, several teams have historically used commercially-available systems such as Parker's IQAN system (link below) or discrete logic due to a lack of technical knowledge (link below). Apart from these two examples, very little public documentation exists on the electrical control systems used by previous competitors, but I believe that designing a control system and user interface from scratch will be a unique and new approach to controlling the hydraulic system.

I am aiming for a 1-person team as there are 6 MechSE counterparts. I emailed Professor Carney on 10/3/14 and he thought the general concept was acceptable.

Operating modes, simplified:

Direct drive (rider's pedaling power goes directly to hydraulic motor)

Coasting (no power input, motor input and output "shorted")

Charge accumulators (store energy in expanding rubber balloons)

Discharge accumulators (use stored energy to supply power to motor)

Regenerative braking (use motor energy to charge accumulators)

Download Competition Specs: https://uofi.box.com/shared/static/gst4s78tcdmfnwpjmf9hkvuzlu8jf771.pdf

Team using IQAN system (top right corner): https://engineering.purdue.edu/ABE/InfoFor/CurrentStudents/SeniorProjects/2012/GeskeLamneckSparenbergEtAl

Team using discrete logic (page 19): http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/86206/ME450?sequence=1