Design & Analysis

of Centrifugal Governor

Summary

  • Designed a centrifugal governor by investigating 5 undefined dimensions that satisfy 11 given requirements

  • Conducted Solidworks FEA analysis of max von Mises stress, axial displacement, and fundamental frequency

Mission

In the design problem, my team was given a centrifugal governor with 5 undefined dimensions and a set of 11 requirements on its design and mechanical properties.

My team decided to conduct the following simulations:

  • Max von Mises stress

  • Axial deformation

  • Fundamental natural frequency

  • Max deformed length

Under the assumptions that:

  • The shaft is rigid, which means each of the four legs can not influence each other. In Solidworks, only one leg was subjected to the simulation.

  • Because of symmetry, only one-half of the leg was subjected to the simulation.

My Role

I investigated how width influenced the outcome of each simulation. The red horizontal lines are their requirements. I varied the leg width from 1mm to 7mm, and kept the other parameters the same.

None of these trials were accepted because the fundamental natural frequency was too high. This informed my team that we needed to check the frequency first when trying out a new design.

The CAD design based on five design paramaters we found out.

Design parameters.

A comparison between simulation results and requirements show that this design is accepted.

The von Mises stress plot of the final design.

The axial displacement plot of the final design.

Tip elongation plot of the final design (probed at the tip)

Fundamental natural frequency of the final design.

Huge thanks to my collaborators: David Mejia Garcia, Jovani Esparza, Sungmo Park