69427
The Artist formerly known as Turbo84
Looking for help finding an affordable variable speed motor for a test setup I'd like to build over the winter. I'm trying to do some horsepower (via wattage) measurements of differing engine mechanical fans. I've always distrusted the results I've seen in hot rodding type magazines, as the tests were always done on a static engine dyno (where the fan has to pump a lot of ambient air), whereas in the real world there is varying "wind" speeds entering and exiting the radiator due to the vehicle speed, and this varying wind exit speed should affect the instantaneous angle of attack (for lack of the correct phrase) that the fan blade sees in the moving air. I'd like to vary both the fan RPM (up to about 5000) and the (radiator exit) air speed hitting the fan blades, and measure the electric motor current (and then convert to horsepower) to see what the horsepower requirements are in a somewhat real environment. I don't know at this point what the motor horsepower requirements would need to be, so that's just one of the many unknowns. (I've got another aspect of mechanical fans I'd like to measure, but you'll think I'm crazy if I go into detail on that at the moment, so I'll leave that discussion for later.)
I'm not an electric motor expert, so any helpful suggestions of what might work, and where to get a motor (used and cheaper is preferred) to do this experiment is appreciated.
Thanks.
I'm not an electric motor expert, so any helpful suggestions of what might work, and where to get a motor (used and cheaper is preferred) to do this experiment is appreciated.
Thanks.