Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Date of Degree Completion

Spring 2016

Department

Mechanical Engineering Technology

Committee Chair

Dr. Craig Johnson

Second Committee Member

Roger Beardsley

Third Committee Member

Charles Pringle

Abstract

As part of the Mechanical Engineering Technology program, students are required to take a Thermodynamics class. In this class one of the labs they do consists of an air motor running a water pump. The professor teaching that class wanted a device that would fit within the lab rig which would calculate the torque produced by the motor. Therefore this project consists of building a device that will allow the case (body) of the air motor to fully rotate opposite to the rotation of the shaft in order to measure the torque the motor produces at certain revolutions per minute. The way this device was fabricated was through machining parts out of aluminum that hold two bearings that are aligned concentric to the shaft of the motor. Through the bearings there is a shaft which in conjunction with other parts bolts to the back of the motor and rotates with the body of the motor. As the motor runs the body rotates and pushes down on a load cell using an aluminum arm of known length. The final device is an aluminum structure that bolts to the back of the air motor and to the lab rig, the shaft fully rotates on bearings to reduce friction and obtain more accurate measurements. A load cell and digital readout are a separate assembly, the load cell sits under the tip of the torque arm while the readout calculates and displays the load placed on the load cell. Knowing the load on the load cell plus the distance from the tip of the torque arm to the center of the shaft, once simply multiplies those two numbers to obtain a torque value.

Comments

Project web site: http://jbejar91.wix.com/bepa1760xm-torque

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