New MSOE lab helps future-minded students continue 105-year tradition
| Published: 03/01/2008 |
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MSOE students continue a 105-year tradition — in a lab created to meet today's energy concerns.
Completely re-designed, the Energy Conversion and Controls Laboratory provides applied experience in electromechanical energy conversion, automatic control systems, power electronics, drive technologies and programmable controllers. MSOE has had laboratory-based courses in electromechanical energy conversion and industrial controls since its inception over 100 hundred years ago. MSOE's relationship with Rockwell Automation (formerly Allen-Bradley), a partner in the lab, also began in those nascent years.
Students in the laboratory can perform a wide variety of experiments, including motor and generator performance measurement, drive performance measurement, drive setup and control, PLC programming, HMI development and controller networking. In addition, the stations provide an ideal learning environment for senior design teams to envision and create innovative and more energy-efficient products. Recent projects include a cordless leaf blower, a high current pulsed power supply for electroplating and a static high power transfer switch.
The laboratory includes eight identical workstations modeled after an autodyne tester designed and built by MSOE and Rockwell Automation. The autodyne tester is used to perform automated competitive drives analysis for efficiency and performance.
Each workstation consists of a rotating drive train instrumented with solid state torque and encoder transducers. The transducer signals are fed to a National Instruments data acquisition system for control and display. Active drive train loading is implemented with a Rockwell Automation 3HP DC dynamometer supplying its output power to the AC lines via a Rockwell Automation 1395 four quadrant regenerative DC drive. A complete suite of rotating machines can be tested including induction, DC and synchronous. The AC machines can be supplied by a fixed 60Hz source or from a Rockwell Automation Power Flex Vector Control AC drive. The DC machines are supplied from a pulse width modulated (PWM) DC drive.
All instrumentation and control in the system is networked using Ethernet. Drive parameters can be monitored and set using Rockwell's Drive Executive software. The system can be controlled from a networked Rockwell Automation ControlLogix programmable logic controller (PLC). The controls user interface is on an Allen-Bradley VersaView CE touchpanel. Virtual human machine interface (HMI) touch panels are created using Rockwell's FactoryTalk View development tools. Electric power measurements are made with networked Fluke 434 Power Quality Analyzers.
The laboratory classes serve MSOE students enrolled for degree programs and non-degree courses offered to industry groups. Many MSOE laboratories and facilities find dual use in degree programs and in continuing education. Due to their extensive hardware background MSOE graduates are in high demand.