Week 3

This week we have been designing and acquiring components to build our engine simulator.
I have designed an adaptor to mount a toothed ABS ring on a radiator fan motor in Solidworks. This will provide the simulated crankshaft sensor signal for the engine simulator. I will machine the adaptor from aluminium this week but we also need to source an ABS sensor to pick up the signal. Once this is complete we can begin assembling to simulator and wiring it up.

Spin Bench Assembly.

Adaptor diagram.

Week 2

This week we have finalised our project. We plan to develop a control system. Initially for a single cylinder motorbike engine. It will incorporate water injection and ion sensing ignition feedback to adapt the ignition timing.
Max Pike has joined our team, a third man will be good as we have a lot of work to do. Steve Liggett has approved our proposal and already sourced a Freescale ECU development kit for us to use on our test engine.
Our first task is to build a engine simulator on a bench top so we can program and test the ECU and develop our project components before moving over to testing on a real engine. This will hopefully be ready to power up and begin programming over the next week or two.

09/08/2011

OK so I've finally gotten around to creating my own blog. This is a first for me but should be interesting to look back upon as the semester progresses.
I have teamed up with Ambar for the technology project. We have both had an initial burst of energy and have almost completed the proposal for our project. We are looking at ways to improve engine performance under adverse conditions including auxiliary injection and an adaptive control system. Because of this we have asked Steve Liggett to be our technical advisor.
All very exciting stuff for me at the moment. I am looking forward to completing our proposal and getting into the technical stuff.