Team Members & Role:

• Shivani Ray – Team Lead
• Evan Graf – Design Lead
• Edrick Kusumo – Analysis Lead
• Armando Morera – Fabrication Lead
• Jonathan Zepeda-Davila – Evaluation Lead

Abstract:
MIE 597AU is an industrial automation course taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst by Professor Jim Lagrant, in which students design and implement automation systems and industrial controls for a fictional process. This year, the fictional sub-system to be implemented for the
course’s term project is an industrial, dual-pump epoxy mixer, which requires two liquids to be pumped into specified ratio by a fluid transport apparatus. For this apparatus, MIE 597AU students will produce a program to control fluid delivery throughout the system. For this reason, Professor Lagrant has tasked this team with designing and fabricating a prototype of a fluid transport system for seamless classroom use in his class. By producing this fluid transport system, the team will provide Professor Lagrant with an educational tool that he can use to teach, instruct, and assess his students with, in regards to his automation and controls curriculum. Although large-scale, industrial versions of fluid transport systems are available, they are highly expensive solutions that cannot provide a tailored, customizable system that Professor Lagrant requires for his class. The team’s scope for designing the system included pump selection (sized to meet required pumping rates), piping design (size, material, and configuration of tubing, piping, hosing, etc.), storage selection (size and material of fluid storage reservoir), and the integration of the pumps, motors, flow sensors, and valves on a self-supporting, semi-portable frame. Ultimately, the team designed a water transport system integrating a vertical, extruded aluminum profile frame on wheels for portability, two rotary vane pumps optimized for low viscosity, mid-pressure fluids like water, and automated divert and drain valves for students to control using an external human machine interface, all while maintaining a flow sensor configuration that is modular enough for students to easily change components of the system as needed for their assignments.