Engineering Projects/Hydraulic ram/Howard Community College/Fall2012/p1-504-vrbr

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The purpose of this project is to build a functioning model of a Hydraulic Ram. A Hydraulic Ram is a device that is able to move small amounts of water over large distances without using any electricity and very few moving parts. The system functions by building water pressure in the input pipe (part 1 in the poster below), a valve release, water enters the pipe at a high pressure and is ejected from a small nozzle at the end of the device.

Problem Statement
Create a working model of the Hydraulic Ram that demonstrates how adding a pressure vessel to the system increases efficiency

Team Members

 * Brian Kraemer
 * Vincent Totis
 * Rian Buckley
 * Ryan Counts

Summary
Put an overall, short one paragraph summary here.

Story
The original idea for constructing a hydraulic ram came from our teacher, Mr. Plotnick. The members of this group were chosen to do this project because we all expressed interest in constructing a hydraulic ram.

Unlike many of the projects that people were able to choose from, the hydraulic ram had to be started from the beginning. There were no other projects that we were able to build off of. Because of this, the first week or so of the project was not spent creating anything physical, but actually deciding on the design of the ram.

Our first idea for the input portion of the ram was to have a long, spiraling tube lead into the input. The idea was that we would be able to increase the speed and pressure of the water entering the ram itself. We shortly found out out, however, that a the speed and quantity of water behind the ram had little bearing on the pressure of the water entering the ram. At that time, we redesigned our input to the one we have now, which is 12-15ft of 2” PVC pipe straight up. This will maximize the pressure at the input.

Then came designing the ram itself. We were able to find some ideas online of what would work best and we tried to mimic some of those ideas. The main departure from the online versions is that we were later asked to show how the pressure vessel affects the strength and efficiency of the ram. To show this, we added an extra ball valve just before the pressure vessel. This way we can easily turn off or on the effect of the pressure vessel and indeed show that pressure vessel increases efficiency.

The design of the ram is basically complete. We are just waiting on the lasts parts to come in and then we will begin testing.

All and all this has been a successful 4 weeks of design. Once we have the final parts everything should be completed quickly.



Decision List
List all formal decisions made with links to their documentation such as a decision tree or decision matrix.

Material List

 * 10'x2" PVC Pipe - $6.50
 * 2" to 2" PVC Connector. $1
 * 2" to 1.5" reducer - $1.50
 * 1.5" 90 deg elbow - $1.50
 * 1.5" ball valve - free

-Future Purchases Need: Material for RAM

Software List
This will be modeled using AutoDesk Inventor 2013.

Time
4 hours

Tutorials
''All projects create new tutorials of technical details future participants are going to want to know. They are going to be separate pages that are linked to here.'' Cementing PVC systems
 * Get PVC components
 * Get PVC Cement and Primer
 * Identify pieces to cement together
 * Apply primer liberally to inside of larger piece and outside of smaller piece
 * Apply Cement carefully to inside of larger piece
 * Put pieces together
 * Turn 1/4 of the way around
 * Hold Together firmly for around 30 seconds
 * Wait Approx. 30 mins.
 * Done!

Next Steps
List specific details, advice, describe the current problems that the next team faces associated with the project here.