Teamwork

Description

The teamwork grade is composed of two assignments. The first teamwork evaluation, administered shortly after the Design Review phase, consists of feedback questions designed to help the ECE 445 Staff better understand how each student's group is progressing towards the final demo. If all questions are answered completely and thoughtfully, the student will be awarded 5 points for completion of the assignment. No partial credit will be awarded for late submissions. The survey may be completed on Compass2g.

The second teamwork evaluation is a subjective score that will be awarded at the end of the semester according to the criteria below. Partner evaluations may be completed on Compass2g at the end of the semester to help determine this score. Responses to both surveys are confidential and will not be disclosed to the other teammates in the student's group.

Requirements and Grading

Each student in a group will be evaluated on the following criteria:

Submission and Deadlines

The teamwork evaluation forms should be completed on Compass2g by the deadlines listed on the Course Calendar. Teamwork evaluation sheets will be taken into account when teamwork grades are assigned. However, these scores will not fully determine the teamwork grade.

Control System and User Interface for Hydraulic Bike

Featured Project

Parker-Hannifin, a fluid power systems company, hosts an annual competition for the design of a chainless bicycle. A MechSE senior design team of mechanical engineers have created a hydraulic circuit with electromechanical valves, but need a control system, user interface, and electrical power for their system. The user would be able to choose between several operating modes (fluid paths), listed at the end.

My solution to this problem is a custom-designed control system and user interface. Based on sensor feedback and user inputs, the system would change operating modes (fluid paths). Additionally, the system could be improved to suggest the best operating mode by implementing a PI or PID controller. The system would not change modes without user interaction due to safety - previous years' bicycles have gone faster than 20mph.

Previous approaches to this problem have usually not included an electrical engineer. As a result, several teams have historically used commercially-available systems such as Parker's IQAN system (link below) or discrete logic due to a lack of technical knowledge (link below). Apart from these two examples, very little public documentation exists on the electrical control systems used by previous competitors, but I believe that designing a control system and user interface from scratch will be a unique and new approach to controlling the hydraulic system.

I am aiming for a 1-person team as there are 6 MechSE counterparts. I emailed Professor Carney on 10/3/14 and he thought the general concept was acceptable.

Operating modes, simplified:

Direct drive (rider's pedaling power goes directly to hydraulic motor)

Coasting (no power input, motor input and output "shorted")

Charge accumulators (store energy in expanding rubber balloons)

Discharge accumulators (use stored energy to supply power to motor)

Regenerative braking (use motor energy to charge accumulators)

Download Competition Specs: https://uofi.box.com/shared/static/gst4s78tcdmfnwpjmf9hkvuzlu8jf771.pdf

Team using IQAN system (top right corner): https://engineering.purdue.edu/ABE/InfoFor/CurrentStudents/SeniorProjects/2012/GeskeLamneckSparenbergEtAl

Team using discrete logic (page 19): http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/86206/ME450?sequence=1