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This project is designed to produce a visualization of
the air flow inside a dryer drum. To accomplish this, techniques were
developed using fog injection illuminated with a laser to see the air
movement. |
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A system was built to inject the fog from a fog machine into four
independently controlled injection sites inside the dryer. At these
injection sites heaters are present to warm the fog being injected, to
better simulate dryer-warmed air. Also included at the injection sites
are thermocouples for measuring the temperatures of the heaters and the
temperatures that the heaters produce in the nearby cloth. Finally, the
exhaust vent of the dryer has been modified to pull air from the drum
at a constant slow rate. |
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To illuminate the fog inside the drum, a laser system has also been
implemented. The laser is reflected off of a mirror down a hollow
shaft. This shaft supports a DC motor that has a mirror mounted on the
shaft at a 45° angle. The motor is housed inside a clear tube that
allows the reflected laser beam to shine out. Then, as the motor spins,
so does the laser beam, producing a near-360° arc of laser-illuminated
fog. |
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Students currently working on this project: |
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