Integrated Transformer Project is Tops at Senior Design Expo

May 30, 2013
Categories: General News Tags: Newsletter

Competing with more than 40 other projects, the team of Andrew Gould, Thiec Rahlan and Joshua Smith won the top award at the Spring 2013 Senior Design Exposition for their Integrated Transformer Monitoring System project.

Sponsored by Schweitzer Engineering Labs, the project involved the design, construction and testing of a transformer monitoring system centered around an existing transformer monitor, real-time automation control system and a dissolved gas analyzer. Specific design requirements of their integrated system included:

  • development of two-stage cooling control based on top oil and winding temperatures,
  • the ability to calculate the percent of water in paper and gas bubbling temperature,
  • the ability to calculate combustible gas in oil in accordance with IEEE guidelines,
  • the ability to perform dynamic calculations of transformer loading capability,
  • development of communication systems between all the devices from a remote SCADA system,
  • and development of web-based monitoring and control.

“The project actually came about from Andrew doing a summer internship with Schweitzer,” said Dr. Maciej Noras, the team’s mentor and assistant professor of Engineering Technology. “Then Andrew picked his friend, Thiec, with whom he wanted to work with on the project. Joshua signed in because it seemed very interesting from the systems engineering perspective, which is his specialty. Honestly, it was best student team I ever mentored.”

The project was complex because of the difficult programming needed to get the many elements to interface with one another and to meet required specifications and protocols. “They faced a lot of programming and wiring issues,” Dr. Noras said. “All the electronics are in a very small, confined space and the team did an excellent job getting everything to fit and work.”

A project management achievement that helped the team win top honors was that they completed their work in early April. “They got everything done and were then able to focus on their presentation and making things look good,” Dr. Noras said. “A lot of teams could learn a lesson from this.”

Also winning honors at the May 2, 2013, expo at Halton Arena on the UNC Charlotte campus was the second-place project, “2012 Formula SAE Chassis.” Team members were Robert Harris, Samuel McAulay, James Rufini, Ryan Shumate and Michael Skarbowski.

In third place was the “Automated Filament Winder Assembly Equipment” project sponsored by MacLean Power Systems. Team members were Mohanned Alsihati, Faisal Alanazi, Chris Lloyd, Lauren Mallard, Nicholas Perkins, Michael Ponzo and Johanthan Thompson.

The Community Outreach Award was presented to the NASA/USLI team for going “above and beyond” the senior design requirements by positively promoting our college and the senior design program. The team was made up of Nathan Muller, Michael Denis, Umar Faraz, Josh Moorey, Gabriela Gunther, Peter Sullivan, Mark Sumerlin and Robert Zenoz.