Project Overview

     Danfoss Turbocor is a world leader in the centrifugal compressor market. Their proprietary maglev technology solidifies their compressors position as a top of the line product. As developing technologies create competition for Turbocor, they aim to add value to their product. To this extent, Senior Design Team 5 has been tasked with the development of a sensor package with the ability to determine real time efficiency.

     Discussions with Turbocor contacts as well as the team’s advisor Dr. Shih have defined the direction of this project. The team is focusing its major efforts into developing and integrating the sensor package to work in conjunction with existing Turbocor monitoring systems. This package integration is to be a stepping stone to the development of a Failure modes prediction system in the future.

     Adding the ability to predict failures will make the systems more reliable and stable.  If the need for nonstandard maintenance can be predicted than it can be prepared for.  This prevents undesirable downtime and possible catastrophic failures.  Turbocor compressors are used in many different environments.  While having the office HVAC fail would be highly annoying, if the same were to happen to a data center or other critical facility then results could be tremendously expensive.  By predicting these possibilities they can be prevented.  In addition, the extra gathered data can be used to improve future iterations through better understanding of their long term behavior.

     We incorporated a Dalian Hipeak TDS100-F ultrasonic flow meter into Turbocor's existing framework.  In addition a mounting system was designed to make installation easier and more flexible.  The sensor output was exceedingly smooth and within 5% of what the current inline flow sensor was reading. For a full overview of our project please read the project Final Report.