Final Year Engineering Project - Flow Bench

[Balance]

Hi all,

First post here, I was directed here by a friend. I have a general question, basically in going into my final year in my Engineering degree and Im looking into proposing my own Final year project, and I'm wondering if you guys think the building of a flow bench would be possible?

Iv scanned a few websites and seen that it is indeed possible to create one with not much effort or expense. Has anyone here done this or know of anyone who has for an engineering degree project.

It dose seem like it may be less involved than the department here may like in order to approve it as a project for me, but I will be taking Computational Fluid Dynamics and Boundary Layer theory as modules next year so I was thinking I could maybe involve some simulation to compare practical results??, Im just pulling ideas out of my head here,

Any feedback at all would be greatly appreciated with regard to potential costs, problems or general ideas to follow

[Tony]

I'm wondering if you guys think the building of a flow bench would be possible?

Welcome to the Forum Balance.

Not only possible, home built flow benches have now been successfully built and calibrated by literally HUNDREDS of people all over the world. Flow bench construction to a professional standard is now a very well beaten path.

On that basis, you have definitely come to the right place, and once you have your flow bench built you will be off to a flying start.

[Balance]

Cheers Tony,

Thanks or the input, yeah just from browsing this forum alone I'm now really hoping I can convince the department to let me go with this idea or some derivation of this project idea.

One of the hurdles will be cost, as it stands I think limit of around 400euros is put on individual student project that do not have industrial backing. What kind of figures would one be looking at to build a good apparatus that could be used for further testing if the University were to grant the idea?

I know I could also easily design and build say a general jigging system for cylinder heads and then another for testing say single curves rather than system of curves, like fan blades and such. Showing them that the idea could potentially benefit other departments could stimulate more interest and maybe better funding of the idea

[Tony]

Costs vary hugely, depending on your final goals.
First there is the basic woodwork, cutting and assembly of the basic structure itself. Assuming you can use University woodworking facilities, you are only up for the cost of the materials.
Then you will need some vacuum cleaner motors. These could be scrounged secondhand (free) or bought brand new.
How many you need depends upon your ultimate flow and pressure capability goals.

Then there are several different ways to control those motors. Speed control just two of them, and fit switches and non return valves to the other motors, that would be the lowest cost option.
Fit a high power speed control module to control all the motors together with a single knob.
Closed loop automatic pressure control is also possible, but not with your budget.

Then comes a means of measuring flow and test pressures.
That ranges from home made water manometers, to a fully integrated software system.
It all depends on what you want, and how deep your pockets are, and what equipment the University already has that you can beg borrow or steal.

I am sure you can put something workable together for 400 euros, but it will require a lot of hard work and improvisation, but its right at the extreme end of just being possible.

[Balance]

Thanks again Tony for your feedback,

I organised a meeting with a lecturer here next week. Im hoping since the University doesn't have a Flow Bence they might look at increasing the budget, especially as there are quite a number of simulation projects every year that could benefit from being backed up by some sound experimental data to back them up. Also I hope alot of the part like either parts for a bench or a full ready made bench could be found and retrofitted along with other parts, leaving a large part of the funding for the measurement equipment. If only the measurement equipment needed to be purchased and forgetting the original budget, how much should one look at spending? I know this may be a very broad question but to give you some parameters, a project ran this year on designing an airbox for a formula student car, running a Honda cbr600 engine, also various smaller design/build projects looking at fan/turbine blade design, in order to get useful data from experiment involving the above how much would cover a good well rounded measurement and instrumentation package?

[Tony]

Basically the bare bench itself is made of MDF or particle board glued and screwed together.
Only the cost of the timber is involved, the total cost of which I cannot even guess at.
For new good quality vacuum motors, maybe VERY ROUGHLY one euro per CFM.

To control motor speed, a very low cost Chinese router speed control could be used, and a bunch of on off switches and some fuses and wiring.
A wild guess, probably just under 100 euros.

By the time you have bought some air tight access covers (deck plates) and a couple of calibrated orifice plates and other assorted hardware, hinges, screws, and what not, maybe another 100 euros ???

That will be without any monitoring or instrumentation, which I assume you can improvise and scrounge fairly readily.
That would be an absolute bare bones flow bench, which could very easily be added to and upgraded with more sophisticated controls and electronics later on.

Its basically an adjustable air source that can blow or suck through a test hole, and an orifice plate that can be used to measure flow. Pretty basic, but it contains all the basic essentials to which you can then add instrumentation.