Project Description: This five-person project was the final experiment for my Heat Transfer lab in Fall 2022, where we had to come up with our own experiment. My group decided to investigate the effects of enclosures and insulation on the power consumption of heated elements, in our case the bed of a 3D printer.
Software Used: Excel (for data analysis)
My Role: My main task for this project was designing and executing our experiment/data collection procedures. We used a prebuilt LabVIEW system with temperature probes to monitor the system, and manually logged power consumption using a power meter.
Other Roles: Other teammates focused on mathematically modelling our system at steady state and comparing the real data to theoretical values of what we expected for two types of enclosures, a simple cardboard enclosure and a COTS 3D printer enclosure.
Big Wins: We were able to compare and observe changes in behavior caused by two different enclosures and the open-air baseline experiment, as well as predict and understand most of what we were seeing.
Challenges: The power variations across our testing were relatively low compared to the accuracy of the tools available for us in the lab.
Key Takeaways: Identify the limiting factor of uncertainty for collecting experimental data during the experimental design stage! The datasheet-listed error of our power meter made the technical conclusions from our data almost insignificant due to uncertainty.
This image shows our basic test setup that we used for our control experiment condition, with free convection to the surrounding environment
This was the commercial enclosure that we tested, which was made of insulated fabric
We also used a cardboard box as a second enclosed condition
We recorded the internal temperature of the enclosures to model the environments and heat transfer through the enclosures, which we compared to the power drawn by the heating elements