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For my Senior Capstone Project, my team is developing a high-precision rocket-fuel sampling device for Benchmark Space Systems capable of diverting varying amount of liquid into seven vials with single milligram accuracy. The device must be able to be shipped world wide, autonomously sample any given amounts regardless of the fluid properties or input pressure, and contain a status screen showing operation progress.
Key Features
Key Features
Rotary Vial Indexer - Due to the highly corrosive nature of rocket propellant, we needed to minimize the number of sensors purchased. The solution to this problem was introducing a rotary indexer. This feature decreased the number of plumbing lines from 8 to 2 vastly simplifying the design and cleaning process. This feature allows for a single high precision ultrasonic flow sensor to be used rather than 7 independent sensors.
Touch Screen GUI - To show the status and allow sensitive material properties to be inputted into the control system I have implemented a Raspberry Pi powered touchscreen with an embedded GUI. The Raspberry Pi operates as the brain behind the control system and constantly integrates flow rate measurements from the ultrasonic flow sensor. The Raspberry Pi uses this information to determine when to open and close the primary valve with fine tuned PID logic, and when to rotate the vile indexer. All of this information is displated on a central GUI shown below.
Control System Simscape Simulation - All design choices and subsystem performance verification was completed in Simulink Simscape Fluids. Controller gains were selected using Simulink's PID autoTuner functionality and gives consistent outputs sufficient for our accuracy and precision requirements.
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