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Hobby-Scale Dynamometer

Mechanical Engineering Capstone Team D

Motivation

The purpose of our capstone project is to design and build a hobby-scale dynamometer (dyno) capable of accurately measuring torque outputs and RPM of the driving motor, and wattage outputs of a motor acting as a small-scale wind turbine generator. The energy difference between these outputs is used to create efficiency and power curves of the motors of interest. Once completed, this dyno will help future Northern Arizona University (NAU) wind turbine teams to accurately test designs under different scenarios to create the most efficient designs possible.

 

Background

The main sponsor/client of this capstone project is David Willy from the mechanical engineering department of NAU. The project description stated by Mr. Willy reads “design, build, and test a hobby scale (~50-500W, ~200-2000KV rating) generator dynamometer. This dyno will be used for all future hobby scale generator characterization for designs in areas such as renewable energy conversion and energy harvesting.”