For this senior capstone project, students at the University of Cincinnati were challenged by the Applied Mechanics and Reliability Departments at Emerson Commercial and Residential Solutions (Copeland™ Compressor Division) to develop a method for testing the wear properties of the Glass Fiber Reinforced Polytetrafluoroethylene (GFR PTFE) material used in the floating seal assembly of a scroll compressor. The wear properties that are defined using this tester will be used in the computer simulation of wear on the seal material under certain compressor operating conditions.  

This project is part of a new partnership between Emerson and the University of Cincinnati. Therefore, no prior work has been done by past senior capstone groups. Additionally, this project will surround the development of a tester for a material being used outside of a typical use case (high load). Due to this fact, there are no appropriate preexisting solutions that could be used in place of the designed tester. 

PROJECT BACKGROUND

FINAL DESIGN OVERVIEW

We made 4 differenct plans for the wear teseting and finalize one of them as our design. The whole design was manufactured phyically by our sponsor Emerson and worked well for material testing. Here is the demonstration for it. At the time we graduated, the first round of testing was not done yet. Therefore, we didn't have data analysis included in our Senior Design Report. Eventually, they should be able to collect the data from the pressure sensor using LabVIEW.

TESTING VIDEO FROM EMERSON