Week 3: Research environment at MSOE

Hello Everyone,

I just wanted to share the research environment at MSOE so far. Throughout the summer, I have been working in MSOE’s Fluid Power Institute^TM in Paul Michael’s research team. The environment of the lab is very nice, as I can interact with other graduate and undergraduate students working in the lab. In the beginning, I was a little scared by seeing the fast pace environment in the lab. But eventually I am getting used to the pace as I am getting deeper into my project. My advisor Paul and graduate students Mercy and Pawan were very helpful explaining everything very efficiently. Plus, I like how my advisor gives me freedom to come up with different solution when I ran into any obstacle in my project. I like how he pushes me to think critically and do more research on a topic. It makes me more efficient and inspires me to work even harder. As the summer goes on I expect to get a deeper sense into the tribology and filtration of different hydraulic fluids.

I hope everyone is having a great time in their projects as well.

Tahseen

Week 6

Hi everyone,

I was able to contact Tom Barraclough this weekend and after conversing he sent me an attachment of an excel spreadsheet with equations in them for calculating the amount of ferrous particles in ppm for a sample. The equations used in the excel spreadsheet are hypothetical, meaning that if the sample tested is known to have only ferrous particles in it, then the equations will give the ferrous particle concentration in the sample tested. How the equations work is that you copy and paste the particle imaging count results into the excel spreadsheet and the equations saved in the excel spreadsheet will calculate the ferrous particle concentration in ppm. Knowing this, I realized that I could input the particle counts for the S-1000 test dust reference samples because they are known to only contain ferrous particles. I put the results in the excel spreadsheet and graphed the results. The Vertical axis represents the ferrous particle concentration in ppm and the horizontal axis is the reference samples containing S-1000 iron test dust. The blue bar is the actual iron ppm that we calculated using our calibration sheet. The orange bar is the calculated iron results from the excel sheet provided by Tom for the reference samples. The black bar is the results of ferrous concentration in ppm that the Q230 counted for the reference samples. The actual and calculated iron ppm are relatively close to each other, but the results that the Q230 yields are not close to the actual and calculated.

Week 5

Hi everyone,

Happy fourth of July! I started to look at the results I had received from the field samples and showed them to Paul. He pointed out that for most of the results, there was no ferrous particle count in ppm. This is an issue because it means that the magnetometer is not counting the concentration of ferrous particles correctly because we compared one of the field samples to a ferrogram result of that sample. The ferrogram shows that there are at least a couple hundred of ferrous particles in ppm for that sample, yet the Q230 was not able to detect them. I had emailed Tom Barraclough one of the inentors of the Q230 to ask him why this phenomenon might occur. Unfortunately I will not be able to contact him until next week because he is unavailable this week. The graph are the results of the field samples that I tested last week. The left vertical axis represents the ferrous particle counts of particles >25 microns. The right vertical axis represents the total ferrous particle concentration in ppm and the horizontal axis is the field sample tests. The green bar is the counts for each of the field sample particle counts of particles >25 microns and the orange bar is the ferrous particle concentration. As shown by the graph there are only five orange bars for a total of 38 tests and the ferrogram from sample 16122 (last two tests located on bottom right)had at least a couple of thousand ferrous particles in ppm. I also made another batch of reference samples containing S-1000 iron test dust using the same S-1000 concentrate as the previous reference samples and tested them on the Q230.

Week 4

Hi everyone,

This week I prepared field samples which will be used to evaluate the dual magnetometer technology integrated in the Q230. What makes field samples so great is that they are hydraulic fluids from machines that have wear contaminants in them. Ferrograms have already been taken from the field samples that I will be testing and will be used to see if the magnetometer technology is able to detect ferrous particles properly. What makes the magnetometer technology unique to other ferrograph tests is that it can give ferrous particle counts and concentration in a faster amount of time. The procedure I used to prepare the field samples is presented below (this procedure was also used for the S-1000 reference samples and test dust concentrate samples). :

1. Agitate the sample in paint shaker for 10 to 20 minutes.
2. Weigh desired amount of original sample into 250mL test bottle.
3. Fill test bottle with MIL-PRF-5606 aerospace hydraulic fluid.
4. Shake test bottle in shaker for 5 minutes.
5. Sonicate for 30-45 seconds.
6. Degas until air bubbles exit fluid.
7. Run test samples through Q230 multiple times.

Unfortunately I was unable to finish the total 38 field samples that are to be tested because I ran out of the 5606 hydraulic fluid which is the solvent I use to prepare my test samples because 5606 is a very clean hydraulic fluid. 

Week 3

Hi everyone,

This week I conducted my first presentation for my project. Overall I believe I did decent, but I found myself confused on what to say and if what I was saying was properly spoken with the right terminology. The feedback I received from the advisors and the other REU students was very helpful and will be used in my next practice presentation. This week I also prepared another set of reference samples. The first sample was filled with 33.29mg of S-1000 iron test dust and 200mL of MIL-PRF-5606 hydraulic oil (sample will be called S-1000 concentrate). Next, different amounts of S-1000 concentrate was weighed into another set 250mL bottles filled with 200mL of 5606 fluid (will be called reference samples). These reference samples were then tested using the Q230 and the results were exported to excel. I forgot to mention last week that the amount of concentrate in the reference bottles were converted from grams to mg/L in excel to give us the amount of test dust in each reference sample. Then the mg/L concentration was graphed with the amount of particles >4 microns, where the X-axis was test dust concentration in mg/L and the Y-axis was particles >4 microns in particles/mL. Then a trend line was created from the given points to give the amount of correlation between all of the points on the graph. This same process was done with the reference samples filled with S-1000 concentrate. This graph has on X-axis the S-1000 test dust concentration in mg/L, and the Y-axis having the total ferrous particle concentration in ppm (mg/L). The reference samples filled with test dust concentrate have a 99.81% correlation while the reference samples with S-1000 test dust concentration have an 80.72% concentration.  

Week 2

Hi everyone,

The new technology that I will be using for analyzing large ferrous particles in hydraulic fluids arrived last week and the new technology is the Lasernet Fines Q230. The Q230 consists of a particle imaging system which counts particles >4µm (microns) in a fluid and a dual magnetometer system that counts ferrous articles >25 microns and the total concentration of ferrous particles in parts-per-million (ppm). I will be focused on the dual magnetometer system of the Q230 because this is the new technology that can give a quantitative result of ferrous particles in a given hydraulic fluid. Before testing we had to make sure the Q230 was functioning properly by calibrating it with the given calibration fluids provided. The Q230 is functioning properly when the given calibration fluids are tested on it and yield a certain result. After configuring the Q230 to the computer we stared to calibrate it and after a couple of hours the Q230 yielded the proper results of the calibration fluids and worked properly. I also read the Q230 instruction manual before I started conducting tests on it and gave a status report. This week I also prepared reference samples by creating a concentrated 250mL bottle filled with 18.56mg of ISO medium test dust and 200mL of MIL-PRF-5606 hydraulic oil (sample will be called test dust concentrate). Next I filled separate 250mL bottles (reference samples) with different amounts of test dust concentrate and tested them on the Q230.

Week 1

Hi everyone,

This weekend I arrived at Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) which is located in Wisconsin. Upon my arrival I was greeted by my advisor Paul Michael who drove me to the Grohman Tower which is one of MSOE’s dorms. Paul told me that my project is going to be analyzing large ferrous particles in hydraulic fluids and I will be using the Lasernet Fines Q230 to do this. During the week I was introduced to the rest of the REU students at MSOE, two of which will be going to the University of Johannesburg which is located in Africa. The week here at MSOE consisted of meeting with my advisor and the rest of the other advisors working on various research projects. It was also orientation week where the rest of the REU students and I were accompanied by Betty Albrecht and Subha Kumpaty. I also learned a little of solidworks because there was a solidworks training taught by the REU student Andrew Gray. There was also tours around the campus and discovering fun events here at Milwaukee hosted by Rick Gagliano.