Development of miniature jet engine test rig

In this project, a general-purpose ground level jet engine test cell was designed and developed. The design is a conversion of an existing MiniLab™ Test Bench from Turbine Technologies Ltd. This project expands the test capability of the MiniLab™ which is limited to test the SR-30 Jet engine only. This project enables the converted test bench to evaluate performance of various micro-jet engines of different sizes using an obstruction free and fully suspended sliding thrust table while maintaining the simultaneous real-time data capturing ability on the existing data acquisition unit (DAQ) from MiniLabtm Test Bench. In addition, this project also focuses on important areas such as, the structural and modal response of the test bench through analysis using numerical simulation tool FeMap and CosmosWork, data conversion on the DAQ was also modified to suit the signal response of the new thrust table mechanism, which operates differently from the MiniLabtm Test Bench. The project concludes with a successful engine test firing of the SR-30 micro jet engine on the newly developed test bench.Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering