Files
Abstract
Each semester, the University of Southern Indiana's engineering program offers a
course that includes a high altitude balloon project. The university also funds several design
projects for the students that include near space exploration and research. With each case, many
electrical components that are critical to the respective projects' success are subject to a nearvacuum
and extreme cold temperature of the upper layers of the atmosphere. These harsh
conditions can result in unrecorded data, unrecorded video footage, or a potentially failed
component. A thermal vacuum chamber (TVC) was designed and constructed in order to allow
students to test these components prior to launching them on the balloon, or implementing them
in their project. A TVC is a testing chamber that will simulate extremely cold temperatures as
well as a near vacuum.
The objective for this design project was to design, build, and test a TVC that was
capable of achieving a temperature of -60 °C and a pressure of 10 mbar. During the design phase
of this projeet, three conceptual designs were evaluated. These included a separate system, a
combined system utilizing a chiller, and a combined system utilizing liquid nitrogen (LN2). After
a qualitative analysis was completed, the concept chosen to be further evaluated, designed, and
constructed was the combined system that utilized LN2.
This system design had an overall material budget of $2,776.25. This system was built in
the Applied Engineering Center (AEC), and this is where the chamber will be used by students.
The construction of the chamber took 62 days, and the chamber was tested for two days. The
chamber was able to achieve a temperature of -77.6 °C and a pressure of 627.23 mbar