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Figure 1
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Figure 2
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Electrical and Computer Engineering
Team 2016

Team Members

Faculty Advisor

Timothy Beacham
Xu Dong (Andy) Lu
Ryan Pyrch

Necmi Biyikli

Sponsor

Pratt & Whitney

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The objective of this project is to model and prototype a dual-bore Oil Debris Monitoring (ODM) system for use in Pratt & Whitney’s jet engines. The ODM sensor detects debris particles in engine oil and helps prevent engine failure. The current ODM system used by Pratt & Whitney consists of a single assembly in which the pressurized lubricant flows through a single channel to one ODM sensor. The dual-bore setup minimizes electromagnetic interference between the interacting coils’ magnetic fields while optimizing the assembly’s ability to detect small particles with high accuracy. The dual-bore split flow path also serves to preserve feasible pressure conditions to ensure the reliability of the ODM sensors. A single ODM sensor is created using three inductive coils. The outside coils are excitation coils being powered by a sinusoidal function. The middle coil is a sensing coil used to detect the electromagnetic field produced by the excitation coils. When ferromagnetic particles pass through the coils, they disturb the magnetic field. The resulting disturbance causes the sensing coil to observe a higher voltage. The dual-bore ODM setup is created by placing two ODM sensors in parallel. Interactions between the two sets of coils were analyzed to ensure reactions in the sensing coils only occurred when debris was in the corresponding ODM.