During my senior year at Purdue University, I was enrolled in Heat and Mass Transfer ME 315. The majority of this class was focused on a project, of my choosing, that would solve a real-world engineering problem or investigate a claim. I worked in a group of 2 other senior Mechanical Engineers as we studied why a certain air compressor overheats.
Shown above is the air compressor that our team chose. This air compressor is typically used to fill water toys of various sizes.
As an engineer would do, we opened up the compressor to take a look.
After not seeing any major issues with the interior components (wear and tear), we ran the machine to see how it operates. Shown above is a thermal image taken of the interior after the system was at steady-state. We quickly noticed the very hot electromagnet that turns electrical energy into mechanical. After some discussion with the manufacturer, he suggested that no part within the compressor was to achieve 333 degrees Kelvin. This was far too hot.
We then placed some thermocouples on the compressor in set locations and ran the experiment, continually taking the measurements shown above.
Shown above is a rough drawing of the boundary regions for this system. This guided our team’s mathematical approach to finding a solution.
Our solution consisted of a powerful computer fan moving air over the electromagnet and thereby increasing the heat lost through convection.
Our designed solution greatly reduced the temperature of the electromagnet. Our goal for the design was to achieve a steady state temperature below 40 degrees Celsius. As it is shown above, our team succeeded in doing this.
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