Back to basics

Hello All,

I will try to make this as least boring as possible for you all. The problem I am trying to solve starts with the inability to time the opening of specific valves in our labs prototype pump (which is pretty cool but I won't get into that). Fluid is deemed theoretically in-compressible but in fact you can compress the fluid at high pressures. This compressibility becomes a problem when there is a time delay between when fluid is introduced into a component and when the fluid reaches a high enough pressure to open the release valve allowing the fluid to escape once a desired pressure is reached. This timing issue results in many inefficiencies and is the basis of my research.

By designing a sensor that can relate the pressure achieved by a given volume displacement, we can record what is called the Bulk Modulus of the fluid contained. The inverse of the bulk modulus is the fluids compressibility, which we can relate to the time needed to open a valve given a certain compressibility factor. The "Stiffness" (fluids ability to resist volume displacement under pressure) is greatly modified when gas bubbles find their way into the system, which can be a common occurrence in most systems. So a controlled gas/fluid mixture will be introduced into the sensor to find the different Bulk modulus values for a given mixture.

Finally when this is all done, I will then find a way to integrate this sensor into a system to record the bulk modulus of the fluid in real time and plot it against the opening and closing of valves within the system to see how they relate.

Hope that wasn't too dull!

Alek