Embedded Files
Fully assembled Verification & Validation (V&V) highly accelerated life testing (HALT) rig executing 100,000 stress cycles in corrosive brine and 10,000 cycles in a 5kPa absolute vacuum.
Project Overview
Led a 5-person engineering team to design and build a Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) rig to evaluate liquid level sensor durability under extreme conditions (5 kPa vacuum and corrosive brine exposure). As Team Lead, I managed overall system integration while personally engineering the embedded data acquisition (DAQ) subsystem and fault-detection logic.
Engineering Highlights & Individual Contributions
Project Leadership & Integration: Directed cross-functional efforts between mechanical, PCB, and sensor sub-teams. Managed system-level constraints to ensure the Arduino logic, power delivery, and hardware successfully interfaced without failure in a highly corrosive environment.
Event-Driven Fault Detection: Engineered an asynchronous Arduino C++ state machine to monitor physical brine cycles. Designed a dynamic polling window (e.g. 24 seconds) that actively listened for a HIGH sensor signal. Upon a successful read, the system logged a "Pass," awaited a LOW signal indicating brine drain, and dynamically reset the cycle timer. If the polling window expired before a HIGH signal was detected, the firmware automatically logged a "Fail" state.
Power-Loss Resilient DAQ Architecture: Designed a localized Data Acquisition (DAQ) system using an Arduino and SD shield. Implemented non-volatile memory (EEPROM) state tracking to safeguard cycle timers and test progress, ensuring zero data corruption and seamless recovery during power cycles.
Design
SolidWorks exploded view of modular V&V HALT rig engineered for multi-variant sensor testing.
Logic
State-machine flowchart detailing timer logic and EEPROM state-tracking to isolate exact cycle failure states.
Circuit Design
Custom DAQ wiring diagram and Arduino hardware interface for real-time sensor fault logging.
Hardware Build
Custom PCB and Adafruit datalogger shield interfaced with Arduino UNO and external sensor nodes.
Failure Mode: Sensor False-Positive
Sensor fault mode: false-positive HIGH signal during dry-chamber state, caught by the rig's fault-detection logic.
Failure Mode: Liquid Delivery Under Vacuum
High-position switch consistently failed to trigger — liquid wasn't reliably reaching that height. Swapping the high/low sensors reproduced the same failure at the same position, isolating the root cause to pump performance under vacuum rather than a sensor defect.
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