Emergency Cooling Door

Overview

The projects original goal was to design an emergency cooling door to provide cooling to cabinets containing electrical equipment in the event that the primary heat exchange system fails or is otherwise unavailable. The emergency cooling system must monitor the cabinet temperature and humidity, and display this information to the user. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our group shifted focus from creating a simple functioning prototype to performing a more in depth analysis of each component of the project individually. The end goal is that our results will be used as a springboard for another team to build a more robust prototype than our group originally intended.

Objectives

As the campus closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were unable to make a physical prototype. Each of our team members chose a topic and wrote a report of our design process to help a future team design and implement an even better project than originally intended for us to make.

Approach

-Performed initial concept generation and selection on the design of the cabinet and the arrangement of cooling fans

-Researched characteristics of materials for the cabinet

-Created a 3D CAD model in place of physical prototype

-Conducted an Abaqus FEA Heat Simulation in place of lab testing

-Generated block diagram describing the organization of logic controller

-Calculated an estimate airflow required for cooling fans

-Generated circuit diagrams for fan control circuit and power supply

-Researched different methods of motor controlling

-Researched how to use a microcontroller to measure high AC voltage

-Researched methods to monitor fan direction

Outcomes

-Provided a detailed design process and supporting materials for future teams.

-Future team will be capable of making a much more intricate design than we could have originally.

-This project was able to stay $900+ below budget