Design and development of aircraft air-conditioning cooling system training model for Aeronautical Engineering Students’ practice

In an effort to aid instructors to showcase different functions of an aircraft air-conditioning system and offer students in the aerospace class the opportunity for practical exercises and troubleshoot various faults in the aforementioned system, an aircraft air-conditioning cooling system (AACS) training model, based on ground-refrigeration working principle was developed. Several materials, tools and equipment used in the design, development and test performance. Major mechanical unit components included compressor, valve regulator, pressure gauge, condenser, dryer, capillary tube, fan, evaporator, etc., and were designed, modelled using SolidWorks CAD software application and fabricated. Model equations (i.e., cooling rate, heat removed from the cockpit, coefficient of performance, and convective heat transfer coefficient of the refrigerant) for measuring the AACS-training model performance were developed. Cooling monitoring and data logging unit is a microcontroller-based platform. This cooling monitoring and data logging unit comprises of sensors, AC-DC 5V converter module, Arduino Nano microcontroller, LCD display, etc., and was developed to uninterruptedly monitor, display, and record crucial environmental parameters. Preliminary test was conducted until the inner cockpit temperature was steady. The results showed that the system could reduce the cockpit mean internal temperature from 32.75 to 19.8^oC. Curve got resembles a typical cooling curve, which is an indication of the system’s robustness and reliability. It was suggested that AACS-training model should be operated using R134a, and holistic performance test should be carried out using global performance parameters.