Digitalization of a Climate and Altitude Simulation Test Bench for Handheld Power Tools to Automate Its Thermal Management System

Mechanical systems accomplish their tasks better when enhanced with cyber technologies. With the rapidly escalating desire for high efficiency, optimization and flexibility, these physical systems ought to be integrated with cyber technologies that enhance exhaustive manipulation of resources and productivity. The gateway for such a synergetic integration can be referred to as digitalization. Details regarding the digitization of a High-altitude Simulation chamber are discussed thoroughly in this paper. The simulation chamber was originally designed and developed as a test bench to study the characteristics of alternative fuels used in the engines of handheld tools in different altitudes and thermal conditions. It encompasses all the possible realistic temperature variations with altitude raising to 3500m above sea level. Since the testbed’s effectiveness is highly dependent on achieving a combination of desired temperature and altitude values to maintain them for a defined period, optimized control of these features is crucial. To develop such a control scheme, a thorough analysis of the relationship of control variables and actual values was found to be important by primarily addressing the digitalization gap that hindered its possibility. The communication barrier between the system components and computation units was solved by the introduction of a platform that can feed and take control signals with actual sensor data. Via a service-oriented open standard protocol called OPC UA, machine data was transferred to high-level processing units. The undertaken automation addressed the digitalization gap effectively paving the way to make it a highly effective cyber-physical system. The possibility of real-time data acquisition signifies the digital twin of the system can easily be established enhancing the system with readiness to Industry 4.0.