Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Objectives: This paper presents the determination of flexible heater configuration for incubator application. Analysis is done on serial and parallel configuration to determine the best performance between these two configurations. Methods/ Statistical Analysis: Heater in series configuration consumes more power and produces more heat compared to parallel heater. Heat from the heater is transferred to surrounding air inside the incubator through convection process. With the help of fan to enhance the convection process, a parallel heater is studied in this project. Power in the range of 5W and 10W is applied to the series and parallel heater. Temperature is measured using thermal imager and it is recorded every one minute for duration of 10 minutes. Findings: Analysis Of Variance (ANOVA) is conducted to see the significance of parallel and series heater, the significance of the fan to enhance the heat transfer in the incubator and the interaction between the types of heater configuration with the presence of fan. Results from experiments show that the series heater has only slightly higher temperature reading compared to parallel heater and the difference is not significant with the p value of 0.873. However, the presence of fan is significant with p value of 0.006. this indicates that the presence of fan produces higher temperature value inside the incubator. The interaction plot is used to see visual interaction between types of connection and temperature as well as usage of fan and temperature. Results show that the temperature value is at the highest when the fan is switched on under parallel connection compared to series connection. Application/ Improvements: It can be concluded that the parallel heater with fan has potential to produce more heat based on high temperature compared to series connection.

Keywords: ANOVA Analysis, Flexible Heater, Incubator, Series Heater and Parallel Heater