ME 430 Experiment Design

The goal of this project is to develop two experiments for the ME 430 class. These include a heat pipe and solar panel experiments. The heat pipe experiment consists of reverse engineering a heat pipe thesis by W.K. Rossiter and designing an experiment that goes with the heat pipe. The solar panel experiment consists of a solar panel that tracks the movement of the sun and a pyranometer to gather data from the different forms of solar radiation.

Background
Dr. Kumal Kumar wants the Capstone Design students to design two experiment platforms for the ME 430 class to use in their curriculum. For the solar panel, he wants us to make a solar tracking device that gives us feed back on how much solar energy is being produced.

Programmable DC Electronic Load
The BK Precision Electronic Load Model 8500 was selected to dissipate and read the power/voltage/current levels from the solar panel. This electronic load also works with the LabView software and that makes it suitable for this project.

Background
Dr. Kumal Kumar wants the Capstone Design students to design two experiment platforms for the ME 430 class to use in their curriculum. For the heat pipe, he wants us to build it based on a thesis by William Kent Rossiter in 1970.