Development of a control box for a mechanical pressure scanner

In broad terms, the objective of this thesis is to be able to measure and analyse pressure signals coming from different points of a turbine. For this purpose it is needed to read and control a signal, that travels from the turbine to a mechanical multiplexer, which can receive a maximum of 48 pressure inputs and even though it has only one output, it is able to rotate and vary the output pressure which enables the analysis of different pressures in 48 alternate locations of our analysed turbine. This pressure signal, coming from the multiplexor, is sent to the pressure scan which transforms the pressure from a mechanical input into an analogue signal between -10 V and 10V. The signal is then adapted by an amplifier and a filter so that the microcontroller can receive and read it. Then the microcontroller generates a digital signal that will be afterwards read by an external PC via RS232 serial port using LabView to analyse the pressure signals. On the other hand, the multiplexor can rotate by two different means. The first one is just by pushing manually two switches called “manual step” (increase one position) and “manual home” (come back to 48, also called 0 or Home position) located at the optocoupler board. The other way is by sending the order, of step and home, from LabView to the microcontroller through the RS232 interface. Apart from this, we were also committed to find out the functionality of some cables which are coming from the position transmitter (belongs to the multiplexor) that are currently unconnected and study how to know exactly when the multiplexor is in home position.La finalidad de este proyecto es capturar y analizar señales de presión de distintos puntos de una turbina usando el programa gráfico Labview. Para conseguir dicho objetivo, es necesario trabajar por una parte con un sistema electromecánico (hardware), y por otro lado programar tanto un microcontrolador como la interfaz gráfica en Labview (software).Ingeniería Industria