Development of A Pressure Sensing Module and Flow Control System For A Prototype Pump Test Bed

Abstract

Pump test bed is essential to ensure the proper functioning of a pump. However, a conventional pump test bed has some limitations during measuring the flow properties and variating the pump speed. As a result, a digital pump test bed can be a solution for measuring the flow properties more accurately. This article describes the construction process of a pressure sensing module for a digitalized pump test bed and control of flow by varying the speed of a prototype DC pump. A pressure sensing module and flow control system are constructed in this study to develop a prototype pump test bed as well as change the speed of the centrifugal pump. It is found that by using a piezoelectric pressure sensor in delivery pipe, the pressure sensing error is only 6.3% at the designed speed of pump and can be minimized by calibrating the sensor, fixing the leakage problem and increasing the pressure of flow. A wide variety of pump speeds can also be obtained by applying pulse width modulation principle without stopping the power supply.