Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
49 U.S. Army Microgrid
 Matthew Weberski
Patrick Yang
Sahil Morrow
 Vassily Petrov design_document1.pdf
design_document2.pdf
design_document3.pdf
design_document4.pdf
design_document5.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
proposal1.pdf
proposal2.pdf
Group Members: Sahil Morrow (sahilsm2), Patrick Yang (pyyang2), Matthew Weberski (mwebers2)

Problem:
There are locations around the world where traditional energy sources are poorly distributed, or not available at all. This can be caused by natural disasters that knock the grid in the area, leaving the people in the area without any electricity. Also, it makes the job of aid workers more difficult because they have no way to power any devices they bring to help people in need. The Army Corps of Engineers wants a system to provide an emergency source of power to places in need.

Solution Overview:
We will develop a small-scale microgrid that will be powered by multiple diesel engines. After reestablishing power, the diesel engines would then be substituted by a clean energy source. The subsystems for our design will include: the two different power supplies, a power converter to transfer power to the grid, a control system, and a monitor system.

Solution Components:
Power Supplies: Initially diesel engines will provide the energy needed to restore power back to the grid. Overtime, these diesel engines would be transitioned to a clean energy source, such as solar panels to maintain the grid.

Power Converter: There must be an interface between the systems providing the power to the microgrid after being generated from the different power supplies. The microgrid will provide AC power, while the power supplies will generate DC power. A DC-AC inverter will be required to convert the output power of the supplies to match the required input power of the microgrid.

Control System: A control system will be needed in order to keep the microgrid operating within the desired power range as specified by the client.

Power Monitoring System: We will have sensors attached to the microgrid, along with a UI individuals deploying this microgrid may use to keep track of the performance of the microgrid and how much energy it is capable of providing.

Criterion for Success:
The Army Corps of Engineers wishes for us to design, model and analyze a small-scale prototype of the microgrid.

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