Designing an Engine Test Cell: Overview

Welcome to Part 1 of a multi-part series centered around designing and building an engine test cell. In this initial episode, Mike and Chris talk about their personal experience with test cell design and discuss the differences between portable and non-portable test cells.  Join us to hear a  good overview of what's involved in planning for a new test cell. Future episodes will dive into more detail and cover specific areas of test cell design such as: 

• Test Cell Foundation
• Room Design & Construction
• Ventilation & HVAC
• Cooling Water Supply Systems
• Electrical
• Fuel Delivery/Measurement
• Facility Controls
• EHS

Thank you for listening! If there's an engine testing topic you'd like us to cover in future episodes, or you'd like to be a guest on dyno INSITES, please email podcast@froudedyno.com.

Visit Froude's website for more information on dynamometer test systems.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Mike Golda: Hey, Chris, how's it going?

[00:00:01] Chris Middlemass: I'm doing fine, Mike. How about you? 

[00:00:03] Mike Golda: Not too bad. Pretty excited though of the upcoming series of podcasts that we have. We're covering test cell design, so we'll cover approximately nine podcasts, give or take, but it'll deal with anything from ground up.

[00:00:17] Mike Golda: And the series of podcasts will hone in on certain key areas that need to be considered when doing this or embarking upon a test cell. 

[00:00:27] Chris Middlemass: Sounds good. Then, so if you start off with this, then, how do you work out if you really need a test cell? 

[00:00:33] Mike Golda: Good question. all I can do is relate to some of the personal experiences I've had and sometimes you don't.

[00:00:40] Mike Golda: So how do you determine that? Well, there's a lot of things that go into it and you need to think about what you're testing. What kind of testing you're doing. You know, are there safety regulations and typically there's safety involved with everything we do in life. There's some form of safety.

[00:00:53] Mike Golda: Even if you're at home sharpening a lawnmower blade, you're going to wear safety glasses, hopefully. But you need to consider a lot of things to determine if you need a test cell, and in some circumstances you don't. Maybe it's just an open floor area where you're spinning something, but typically when you have a combustion engine where you have that type of risk associated with fuel, 

[00:01:14] Chris Middlemass: Yeah, you'll, you need some form of containment, some sort of limit,

[00:01:18] Mike Golda: Yeah. So if you had a fire, how do you contain a fire? Unless you have a, a pretty intense fire suppression system out in the open, which is possible, but it's not practical. But anyways, yeah. That goes into it.

[00:01:29] Chris Middlemass: Okay then, so if we presume then we need a test cell we've got to have a room that contains the equipment, contains, as you mentioned, the fuel and everything else.

[00:01:37] Chris Middlemass: Let's take it from there and talk about the test cell design. I guess the first part of that is to, to determine the layout of the cell. 

[00:01:46] Mike Golda: Yeah. what this is boiling down to is developing the specification. You have to design a test cell, you need to know what the specification is.

[00:01:54] Mike Golda: You need to create that. And there's a lot of factors that go into it. So if you look at you back to your original question, do you really, need a test cell? You know, let's be careful, or let's understand that a little bit better as we dive into this, because whether you need a test cell, or not, you still have to think about all the things we're going to talk about.

[00:02:13] Mike Golda: They still apply to some extent or another, but it does push you in a direction of specifics. So from a standpoint of a test cell or a non-test cell, let me back up. In a non-test environment, if you look at the aerospace industry or aircraft industry, there's thrust test beds.

[00:02:32] Mike Golda: Now we working at Froude don't deal with thrust test beds too much. But it's still in an environment that's somewhat a controlled environment. The engines, jet engines on aircraft are fairly large in size. You don't normally see them enclosed in four walls in a ceiling. Normally it's in a fixture in the outside environment to house it, to hold the engine and measure the thrust of the engine.

[00:02:57] Mike Golda: It's still considered to be a type of test cell, but there's not four walls. So just to literally, no pun intended, ground us. 

[00:03:08] Chris Middlemass: Well, I guess to be fair, you do have two walls, even if you are pushing the air through them. 

[00:03:15] Mike Golda: because one of the things too is you, with that one, you'd have to contend with noise in a big way.

[00:03:20] Chris Middlemass: so quite an extreme example. But if we're presuming we've determined we need a test cell, I guess one of the most, fundamental questions with how we test is we're going to look at a portable dyno or a fixed one.

[00:03:31] Mike Golda: Yeah. So have you had experience with both?

[00:03:34] Chris Middlemass: I've only worked with fixed dynos and I understand the portable, but I've not used one myself. 

[00:03:40] Mike Golda: So some of the obvious portable test cells are when you need something that is temporary. Or you need something that is being put in a remote location that it's easier to put it in that location. All self-contained, all everything's on it. So all you really need to do is add power to it and go, maybe it's a short-term project that's only going to last two years and then you're never going to use it again. So you really don't want to make that significant investment. That's one of the scenarios. Another one will be that I have experience with or had experience with is creating portable test cells because we needed to do end of line testing for one of the big three as they produced engines off the assembly line.

[00:04:24] Mike Golda: So one of the requirements was, we needed to have testing capabilities no less or no more than 10 miles away from their facility in New York. The only way to do that basically is create these C container test cells or portable test cells to test these engines and we needed to test quite a bit of them. So it was a minimal investment as compared to brick and mortar, and that was a reason portable was chosen at that time because afterwards the test cells go away. So we can take those test cells, uproot them and go to another location and start doing testing.

[00:04:55] Chris Middlemass: Well, tell me, do we lose any, functionality or accuracy or any other features by going portable compared to non portable??

[00:05:04] Mike Golda: Well, typically, the accuracy can be addressed one way or the other, portable and non portable to have the same level of accuracy. Where the constraints come into play is typically you're more in a confined environment, so you don't have a lot of area around you, and that's one of the constraints that you have. Most of the time in a portable test cell, you're not going to typically have an emissions compliant development test cell because those are more designed to be permanent infrastructures and there's more equipment required and typically it's not the easiest thing to do with a portable. 

[00:05:40] Chris Middlemass: that's a good point, Mike. I think when we look at those type of development cells, we need more space than you're going to get in a container type cell. Need more room to stretch out, as it were. So I guess that also starts affecting the type of engine you can test.

[00:05:52] Mike Golda: And one of the things is, if talking about the comparisons, contrasting comparisons between the two is portable is once you've made that investment, you're stuck with that size. If you design a brick and mortar test cell, you're probably designing it with the future in mind in regards to having more room around you. You've got a mezzanine above you. And you can put more flexibility into the design versus a portable test cell. Because again, one of the constraints of a portable test cell may be you only have so much floor space to do this testing.

[00:06:24] Mike Golda: And that's where the portability comes into play as well. Cause it's a smaller footprint typically. 

[00:06:29] Chris Middlemass: So it starts limiting what you can add to the cell, what additional test features you can include and becomes really a little bit constrained. So more for pass off tests for. Just really short testing rather than what we'd refer to as development testing.

[00:06:43] Mike Golda: Very good point. Typically you don't see, portable test cells as durability test cells, 

[00:06:49] Chris Middlemass: Right. So then we come back to the question of the type of engine we can put any engine in, in either cell, but obviously with the larger engines, that's going to push more towards a non portable permanent test facility just because of the ancillaries that hang around it.

[00:07:06] Mike Golda: Very good point. You have to look at the size, right? So with the size of an engine, there's several factors that come into play real quick. One is heat, right? So you're going to produce a heck of a lot more heat, typically with a larger engine. And in a small environment, it could be troublesome, but you've got the heat constraints, you've got the sheer vibration.

[00:07:29] Mike Golda: rotational mass issues you need to work through in a portable environment, because you're going to be shaking that test out pretty hard if you got a large diesel engine in it, which you typically wouldn't do because it's not a portable type environment. When you test engines like that, so the type of engine, right?

[00:07:43] Mike Golda: Small displacement gasoline versus large displacement diesel. Just the physical size. Marine applications, for example, not the easiest to do from a portability perspective with that type of environment. Just depends on the size and types of engines. And it ranges as you can imagine.

[00:08:00] Chris Middlemass: We talked about the type of testing as well, and I think we'll go, I mean the, the permanent test out, we'll obviously see what the development and the long-term testing more than a portable. So I think we've probably covered that one then. But as we go past these decision points, it starts to affect the budget as we look towards a permanent cell, I guess we're looking at typically a higher budget as we're looking to have the bricks and mortar and other, other aspects.

[00:08:24] Mike Golda: Right. And one thing I just thought of while you were talking about it is you can't take away from the fact that when you talk about the portability and the portable test cell, your limitations are going to be cooling systems and fuel systems, right? So if you're running longer tests, you need more fuel and it's not like you're going to be in an environment where they already have an existing 20,000 gallon fuel tank sitting in the back of their facility or buried underground.

[00:08:49] Chris Middlemass: So even in cases where I've seen two portable test cells, stacked on top of each other, some use the top level as storage and the bottom level as the test cell. You're still limited then on what you can carry in that space. So you're right, the amount of fuel you could carry, the amount of coolant you can carry is still going to be limited.

[00:09:08] Mike Golda: Right. One thing I would like to mention is that while you were talking about that, one of the other attributes that popped in my head is the speed to test, right? So if you look at brick and mortar, typically that's a slower process.

[00:09:24] Mike Golda: It takes longer to put together a brick and mortar test facility than it will be a portable test facility or portable test container. Yeah. So if speed is what you need and a portable fits, then it's typically going to be quicker to test then a brick and mortar facility. 

[00:09:41] Chris Middlemass: one test facility I've had experience with was in Europe where they had a number of portable test cells stacked up in a big rectangle and they had I think three floors of test cells and about five across, and they would literally pull out a test cell if it failed or if they needed to change the engine, they'd take the test cell out, move things around and then plug it back in and keep testing. So even though we talk about temporary versus more permanent testing, there are still solutions where what is a sensibly, a portable test cell can work well in a more, permanent environment. 

[00:10:17] Mike Golda: Yeah, I agree. It comes down to, best bang for your buck.

[00:10:21] Mike Golda: you can make a portable test cell come pretty close to brick and mortar, but you're going to pay almost what it takes to be brick and mortar to get that far. And speaking of personal experiences, the largest experience I had was portable test cells. I was involved with approximately 13 C container test cells at the OEM's engine manufacturing plant.

[00:10:42] Mike Golda: And we were running engines. We were taking engines six at a time off their assembly line and putting them into the test cell without tools, testing it for a minute, pulling it back out again, and we were going through engines one every three to four minutes. 

[00:11:01] Chris Middlemass: That sounds like quite an experience to pull that together.

[00:11:04] Chris Middlemass: Nice work. So which one has the greater regulation control? The portable or the permanent? I guess they're both covered by regulations. We're still going to be aware of health and safety. But in terms of regulations, do you see it as a greater requirement in one or the other?

[00:11:19] Mike Golda: I think it can be.

[00:11:20] Mike Golda: I think it's hard to sometimes separate it. I think the biggest thing is geographical location, whether it's portable or non portable, I think a lot of the same constraints will be in place based upon your geographic location. And when I say that there's going to be local requirements, state requirements, government requirements, you're going to have permitting involved with permission to permit, to bill, permit to operate air permits from the exhaust emissions perspective.

[00:11:47] Mike Golda: So you're going to have to deal with it to one extent or another. Again, we'll dive into it in future podcasts to more of the details behind whether you need it or not. Hopefully we can provide some more guidance around that.

[00:11:58] Chris Middlemass: That's a good point. I think the same comments and limitations occur when we, talk about fire risk, fire safety, and also the noise aspects of a test cell.

[00:12:06] Mike Golda: So from a fire aspect it's somewhat self-explanatory. You’ve got to protect for, if you're running a combustion engine that utilizes fuel of one kind or another, last thing you want is any type of safety of event or emergency, but they do occur.

[00:12:21] Mike Golda: It's the reality and you want to make sure you're properly protected. You have to consider the suppression systems in case of a fire, you also have to take into account you're running engines and you're not inside the normal vehicle that they would be installed. So you've got engine exhaust noises, you've got test cell noises that have to be considered, and there are regulations, there are OSHA guidelines around that as far as exposure to noise.

[00:12:45] Mike Golda: So you have to deal with air emit air noise in regards to outside the building as well as inside the test cell itself and the control room. 

[00:12:53] Chris Middlemass: So it clearly is more of a challenge with the portable cell, if you are putting engine test, equipment into a test, chamber, and still trying to fit everything else in to provide fair fire suppression and noise protection, you're really getting a lot of content in a small space.

[00:13:10] Chris Middlemass: Which I'm sure becomes a bigger challenge then. 

[00:13:12] Mike Golda: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can even stack on top of that. You have to then consider that was just noise and we talked about fire noise, but then you talked the emissions aspect, which you have fuel. So once you introduce fuel, you need to have containment for fuel.

[00:13:27] Mike Golda: You need to make sure that you have monitoring for fuel spills, engine exhaust. You need to make sure that you are complying with how much pollutants you're admitting into the air. And there are regulations around that waste water. When you get rid of the water, you're cooling. If you're recirculating the water, that's one thing.

[00:13:47] Mike Golda: But if you have a cooling system and you have evaporation of the water, there are actually restrictions in some facilities that say, you need to understand how much water, chemically treated water, you're evaporating to the air. And that's getting to the nitty gritty details. But that's a consideration.

[00:14:02] Mike Golda: And then again, I brought up spill production as well. 

[00:14:05] Chris Middlemass: I mean, does that vary from location to location? I mean, I can see it varying from country to country because some countries have less regulations than others. But I think if we're talking within the US for example, even different regions would have the same regulations for most of this, I would expect.

[00:14:23] Mike Golda: There is, it's from one extreme to another and a lot of this, like I said earlier there's different levels of regulations. There's the local regulations, the state regulations, government regulations. When it comes to the local, some of them are driven by the local fire departments in regards to environmental health and safety.

[00:14:40] Mike Golda: So they're the ones that have the ultimate say in regards to what the fire protection needs to be, Okay. They're definitely involved in the discussions in most circumstances I've been involved with. 

[00:14:52] Chris Middlemass: there is a preference with the fire people to go with a permanent test cell because the facilities can be more controlled and more comprehensive.

[00:15:02] Mike Golda: and I think short story, but for the areas that I've worked in, some of the municipalities had no experience with test cells and testing, so they relied on the owner to describe so they can understand better the risks associated with safety when it comes to fire and things like that.

[00:15:21] Mike Golda: I spent a lot of time educating or informing the fire departments of what we're talking about. The fuel, how it's coming into the test cell, how we're protecting for it. What type of fire suppression system that we think it should be, right? And then, getting their sign off on it saying, yeah, that's sufficient enough.

[00:15:38] Mike Golda: Or no, you need to add high hazard sprinklers on top of CO2 systems.

[00:15:42] Chris Middlemass:. Then one of the sort of smaller aspects, although still very significant with the test cell, is the mechanical guarding. We're spinning objects at really quite high speeds at times, so we're going to need some mechanical guards to be in place to protect, be it for a portable or or non portable cell.

[00:16:01] Mike Golda: Again, it's what you want your guarding to be. It's how you want to protect. Most people, when they see guarding in front of equipment, they sometimes think that it's to stop things from coming apart and doing more damage. Traditionally, guarding is meant to keep you from interacting or getting into a situation where you're at risk of your hand getting caught in something, whether it be a drive shaft or a hot engine. All these things need to be considered. Typically in test cells, when you're running, again, it's a future podcast, but when you're running, you need to just set up the rules to protect your people.

[00:16:34] Mike Golda: So that may be, you don't go inside a test cell when it's running, or you only go inside a test cell when it's idle. 

[00:16:40] Chris Middlemass: certainly, don't want to put your hand on an exhaust pipe or a spinning drive shaft. Thanks Mike. That's a good introduction to, some of the fundamentals of test cell design.

[00:16:51] Chris Middlemass: Really good discussion. Thanks. I think, it'll be interesting on our next discussion to start looking at the foundations around a test cell, what we need to include and incorporate when we start laying out this design. 

[00:17:04] Mike Golda: Looking forward to it, Chris.