International Journal of Research in Engineering and Science (IJRES)

ISSN (Online): 2320-9364, ISSN (Print): 2320-9356

www.ijres.org Volume 9 Issue 5 ǁ 2021 ǁ PP. 29-34

Automatic Car Washing System

N.B.Kapase1, Nikita R Sayagavi2 , Shreya A Patil3 , Snehal S Patil4 , Sameeksha
P Shete5
1
Assitant Professor, Department of Electronics Engineering, DKTE’s Textile an Engineering Institute,
Ichalkaranji , India
2
Department of Electronics Engineering, DKTE’s Textile and Engineering Institute, Ichalkaranji, India

Abstract
Automatic car washing system is very common and most of the countries have developed it. Car washing system
is mostly associated with fuel and gas filling stations. It consists of machines which have automatically
operated brushes controlled by some electronic controller. Automatic car washing system is operated at
different stages mostly it consist of foaming, washing, drying and brushing. Different types of car washing
systems are present around which are operated on number of controllers. The usage of water is in large
quantity, thus water recycling plant are also part of the automatic car washing system. We have studied some of
the car washing systems from various resources such as Internet, papers and decided to do this project. As
compared to the foreign countries, this system is not used in many cities in India because of its cost, complexity
and investment. But we have tried to minimize it and also the ease to use has been improved in this project.
Key components: Raspberry pi, IR sensor, Motor drivers, different types of motors.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date of Submission: 16-05-2021 Date of acceptance: 31-05-2021
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I. INTRODUCTION
The first automatic car washing system was established in the late 1930s. Automatic car washes consist
of tunnel-like structure where a customer can drive their car or set the car on the conveyor. Some car washes
have their customers pay through a online website and then automatically wash the car. When the customer
completes the online payment or manual payment, the car is put into a line-up often called as conveyor. At some
places the there is also facility of tire sensor which will get operated once the car is set on the conveyor. It also
reports the customer about the stages that car has completed during washing. The attendant will instruct
customer to set the car on the conveyor and put the car in neutral mode on the conveyor. Through various sensor
the length of the car is detected and according to that delays and other instruction are set in the controller. A
good car washing system uses different stages or station for washing. Various chemicals and other equipment
such as frame, or arches, different sensor, motors are used at different stages. The carwash generally starts
cleaning using presoaks applied through arches. They may apply a lower pH chemical followed by a higher pH
chemical, or the order may be reversed depending on the condition. Chemical concentration and quality depend
on the condition of the car. Chemical substance is carefully combined and used since they may affect the color,
structure or any part of the car. The customer next encounters tire and wheel nozzles, where different formulas
and concentration are used in order to remove the dust, mud, etc. The next stage is wraparounds, it is usually
made of a soft cloth, or closed cell foam material. These wraparounds rub against the front bumper and, after
washing the sides, it will also clean the rear of the vehicle including the license plate area. After the top brushes
stage the car may pass through a second set of wraparounds. Then there is again washing stage where high
pressure water streams are used in order to clean the foam and the dust. After second wash the car then passes
through the drying stage were all the water is soaked and car is dried including the tiers and other parts. So, this
is the basic concept on which every car washing system is based on.
Older car washing systems were operated manually and there was no use of any controller. So there
arises many issues such as painting of the car was rubes, scratches on the sides and the glasses, the intricate
parts were not cleaned properly. In order to resolve all such issues, the controller were used later. The most used
controller were PLC and micro-controller. The installation charges are more for PLC and the micro-controller is
more as compared to the raspberry pi. The coding that is used in raspberry pi is simple and easy to understand as
compared to the PLC and micro-controller. Any person who doesn’t have any electronics background can easily
handle the station and control the whole system. The automatic car washing system has manually reduced the
workload and the employees. Many car washing systems also provide various services such as polishing, and
waxing the car's exterior by hand or machine, shampooing and steaming interiors, and other services related to
the washing and protection.

www.ijres.org 29 | Page
 Automatic Car Washing System

II. BLOCK DIAGRAM

Figure 1:Automatic Car Washing System

This block diagram shows different stages that are present in the project and the correct
implementation of the sensors and the motors that are present in the project. There are several IR sensor and
different types of motors such as pump motor, fan motor and dc motor. This block diagram shows the
connection between the motors and the sensor, which motor gets operated on when the sensor detects the car is
shown.

III. COMPONENTS
3.1. Raspberry Pi
In fig.2 Raspberry Pi is a small-sized computer with an ARM processor. It can run on Linux. Raspberry
Pi 3 Model B+, has 1 GB of RAM, dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), an Ethernet
port, HDMI output, audio output, RCA composite video output four USB ports, and 0.1″-spaced pins.These pins
provide access to general purpose inputs and outputs (GPIO). The Raspberry Pi requires a microSD card with an
operating system on it. The Raspberry Pi is a low cost and small sized computer which can be plugged into a
computer monitor or TV. It is faster and able to decode 4K video benefiting from large/ faster storage and faster
network connections. This helps us to make streams available to any browser or VLC also.

Figure 2: Raspberry Pi

www.ijres.org 30 | Page
 Automatic Car Washing System

3.2. DC Pump Motor

A DC pump motor is a device that moves fluids in a variety of ways by using DC currents. They come
in many different design types, also with its own method of operation, advantages.This DC 3-6 V Mini Micro
Submersible Water Pump is a low cost, small size Submersible Pump Motor which can be operated from a 2.5 ~
6V power supply. The capacity of motor is 120 liters per hour with a very low current consumption of 220mA.
Just connect tube pipe to the motor outlet, submerge it in water and power it.

Figure 3: DC Pump Motor

3.3. DC Motors
A DC motor is arotary electrical motors that converts direct current electrical energy into mechanical
energy. The most common types rely on the forces produced by magnetic fields. Nearly all types of DC motors
have some internal mechanism, either electromechanical or electronic, to periodically change the direction of
current in part of the motor.
DC motors were the first form of motor widely used, because they could be powered from existing
direct-current lighting power distribution systems. A DC motor's speed can be controlled over a wide range,
such as using either a variable supply voltage or by changing the strength of current in its field windings. Small
DC motors are used in tools, toys, and appliances. The universal motor can operate on direct current.But as it is
a lightweight brushed motor it is used for portable power tools and appliances. Larger DC motors are currently
used in propulsion of electric vehicles, elevator and hoists, and in drives for steel rolling mills.

Figure 4: DC Motor

3.4. Motor Driver

The L298 Driver is a high voltage, high current dual full bridge driver designed to accept standard TTL
logic levels and drive inductive loads such relays, solenoids, DC and stepping motors. Two enable inputs are
provided to enable or disable the device independently of the input signals. The emitters of the lower transistors
of each bridge are connected together the corresponding external terminal can be used for the connection of an
external sensing resistor
The L293D IC receives signals from the microprocessor .These signals transmit the relative signal to
the motors. It has two voltage pins, one of which is used to draw current for the working of the L293D .The

www.ijres.org 31 | Page
 Automatic Car Washing System

second is used to apply voltage to the motors. The L293D switches it output signal according to the input
received from the microprocessor. The L293D is a 16 pin IC, with eight pins, on each side, dedicated to the
controlling of a motor. There are 2 INPUT pins, 2 OUTPUT pins and 1 ENABLE pin for each motor. L293D
consist of two H-bridge. H-bridge is the simplest circuit for controlling a low current rated motor.

Figure 5: Motor Driver(L293D)

3.5. DC Fan Motor

DC fans are usually available at three nominal voltages: 12V, 24V and 48V. If the system has regulated
power supply in one of these, then a DC fan may be selected which will give the exact performance required and
as expected, regardless of the AC input variables which plague AC fans. As the speed and airflow of a typical
DC fan is proportional to the voltage supplied, a single product may be used to meet different applications by
setting the supply voltage to what will give the desired airflow.

Figure 6: Fan Motor

3.6. LCD Display

An LCD is a flat panel display, electronic visual display, or video display that uses the light modulating
properties of liquid crystals. Liquid crystals do not emit light directly. It is easy to interface with a micro-
controller because of an embedded controller . This controller is standard across many displays, which means
many micro-controllers (including the Raspberry Pi) have libraries that make displaying messages as easy as a
single line of code. LCDs are available to display arbitrary images (as in a general-purpose computer display) or
fixed images which can be displayed or hidden, such as preset words, digits, and 7-segment displays as in a
digital clock.

www.ijres.org 32 | Page
 Automatic Car Washing System

Figure 7: LCD Display

3.7. IR Sensor Obstacle

The working principle of an infrared sensor is similar to the object detection sensor. This sensor
includes an IR LED & an IR Photodiode. So by combining these two can form a photo-coupler or optocoupler.
The physics laws used in this sensor are planks radiation, Stephan Boltzmann &Wiens displacement.
IR LED is one kind of transmitter that emits IR radiations. This LED looks same as standard LED and
the radiation which is generated by this is not visible to the human eye. Infrared receivers mainly detect the
radiation using an infrared transmitter. These infrared receivers are available in photodiodes form. IR
Photodiodes are dissimilar as compared with usual photodiodes because they detect simply IR radiation..
Once it is used as the combination of an IR transmitter & receiver, then the receiver’s wavelength must
equal the transmitter. Here, the transmitter is IR LED and the receiver is IR photodiode. The infrared photodiode
is responsive to the infrared light which is generated through an infrared LED. The resistance of photo-diode &
the change in output voltage is in proportion to the infrared light obtained. This is the IR sensor’s working
principle.
Once the infrared transmitter generates emission, then it arrives at the object & some of the emission
will reflect back toward the infrared receiver. The sensor output can be decided by the IR receiver depending on
the intensity of the response.

Figure 8: IR Sensor

IV. WORKING
The design of the automatic car washing system is presented in block diagram. Firstly, IR sensor1
senses the presence of the car. If the car is detected, the conveyor belt starts. When the car is detected by the
sensor2, it sends signal to the Raspberry Pi. At that time, the conveyor belt stops and then the car has to be
washed with soapy water and hence the pump motor starts and soapy water is sprayed on the car. The delay time
is set as 10 seconds for soapy water and then the conveyor belt starts to go ahead the brushing process.
After the washing stage the car is moved ahead for cleaning using brush. The IR sensor3 detects the car
and hence the car is cleaned using the brushes as shown. The delay time for brushing is set as 15 seconds and
then, the conveyor belt starts to go ahead to sensor 4.

www.ijres.org 33 | Page
 Automatic Car Washing System

The last stage of car washing system is drying the car for which the car is again moved ahead and when
the IR sensor4 detects the car in place, the fan turns on and the car is dried.The delay time is set as 10 seconds to
get the dry condition. And then, the conveyor is moved down the conveyer belt and the process is finished.

Figure 9:Flow Chart of Automatic Car Washing System

V. CONCLUSION
This project will help to perform car washing automatically which results in high quality end product.
Thus it will be User-friendly and capable to wash multiple cars at a time. The systemalso requires less man
power, time and no pollution. In this century people mostly prefer large production in less time, so in future the
automatic car washing system is more beneficial and will have more demand for saving time for operation,
reducing man power, and improving the economy of the system.

REFERENCES
[1]. K. Vidyasagar, R. Ram Prasad, P. Nagasekhar : “RFID-GSM Autonomous car washing system” International Journal of Computer
Applications (0975-8887) Volume 121-No. 2,July 2015
[2]. Prof. Mhaske D.A.1, Bhavthankar R.G.2, Saindane A. R.3, Darade D.J.4 : “PLC Based car washing system” International Journal
ofInnovative Research in Electronics,Electrical,Instrumentation and Control Engineering Vol 4, Issue 4, April 2016

www.ijres.org 34 | Page