Wind Tunnel Interface System Design
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Date
2015-12-07
Authors
James, Gethin
Wall, Jeremy
Neupane, Roshan
Zhang, Zhaoping
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Abstract
The “Wind Tunnel Interface System Design” project was presented to Team 23 by the West Canitest R&D Inc. (WestCaRD). WestCaRD strives to aid in the development of technologies to advance the aerospace industry through the testing of jet engines and through the engineering analysis. The jet engine testing facility, operated by Standard Aero, is known as the General Electric Testing Research and Development Center (GE TRDC). Currently the instrumentation cables at the testing site are routed to the wind tunnel through a fixed instrumentation rack. Disconnection and management of these cables is needed in order to change testing scenarios, but currently it takes 3 working days and 3 personnel to change between tests. Therefore, the objective of this project is to design three interface systems, as requested by the client, which are able to change over between tests within 1 to 2 days and reduces the labor employed to 2 personnel by managing the instrumentation cables. These designs should allow for small adjustments to the wind tunnel position up to 10ft. without disconnection of the instrumentation cables. Moreover, the design should provide easy connection and disconnection of the instrumentation cables during the wind tunnel movement of up to 20 ft. The three designs developed by the team includes the cable drag chain design, guide loops design, and the sliding extension rail design. The cable drag chain is capable of moving of up to 10 ft. in two directions of the wind tunnel movement. This design has a movable end that is connected to the instrumentation rack and the other end is fixed to the support rack which is mounted to the acoustic wall. The rough order of magnitude (ROM) cost of this design is $19,000. The second design consists of the guide loops to contain cables and pulleys to achieve the movement. This design is capable of moving of up to 20 ft. and has a ROM cost of $25,000. The third design consists of sliding rails which are capable of bending to adjust to the movement of the wind tunnel. This design is capable of moving of up […]