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 feedback on how much solar energy is being produced as it follows the sun.

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.

Solar Panel
During the initial design phase there was discussion on the capacity of the solar panel. We decided on a 100-Watt solar panel from Grape Solar because the electronic load we selected can accurately dissipate and read the load value. The solar panel also comes with a number of features that allow us to have flexibility in our design, one example is weatherproofing. We can't have an ME 430 student falling behind because of a string of rainy days.

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.

Project Learning
For this project we learned how a heat pipe works and what affects it. We learned what each component in the heat pipe did and how vital each of the specs were.