Week after Thanksgiving Break

These past few weeks our team has been mainly concerned with preparing for Presentation 3. This means that we were performing FEA analysis on different parts of the slave bogie. The FEA on the slave bogie was mainly concerning the bottom plate that connects to the cabin. FEA analysis was also performed on the drive bogie with horizontal and vertical in mind. Since the bogie team, this year is primarily focused on the drive bogie all changes have only been made to the drive bogie. The FEA analysis showed that the maximum deflection experienced on the drive bogie is still less than a millimeter. This can be attributed to the fact that the drive bogie is mostly made with 10 mm steel. With these materials, the factor of safety is extremely high. Even with the 10 mm steel the drive bogie is only 75 kg (maximum of 250 kg) when not loaded (no motor). This means that we are able to reduce the amount of material used to make the bogie, this will cut the material cost while only slightly reducing the factor of safety & deflecting marginally more.

This week was like many other prior weeks this week focused on communicating with other teams and improving our design. This week we have received the dimensions and CAD files from the guideway team. This allows us to flush out the height of the bogies. Adjusting the hight of the bogies affects the route selection system. Since we are changing the design of the drive bogie from a 4 wheel drive system to a 2 wheel drive system as well as the dimensions of the drive bogie itself, this affects the motor team. We have checked in with them and luckily the changes made to the bogie is not going to affect the motor team.

This week we have also have been using Ansys to look at the deformation of the drive bogie. I have been running into issues since the student version of Ansys is limited by the files it is able to accept as well as the mesh profiles it is able to generate. I have just found that the student version of Ansys is extremely limited, this is why that I will try and go to school and use the full version.

This week was an exceptionally interesting week. All of the teams met with Dr. Furman who had some information that he disclosed that would affect all of Spartan Superway. Though it affects every team, we as a whole will continue to move forward and try out best. In terms of our project, the integration team has continued to focus on improving the design and streamlining the process. We talked to the lead of the wayside power team about moving the super caps and batteries. The move hinges on the idea of having a drive bogie that is reliant on the slave bogie. Though this drive bogie will be reliant on the slave bogie, we will not be making any design changes as the drive bogie design will still be used as a base model. The independent drive bogies will also have the chance to operate as rescue bogies in the changes that the system breaks down somewhere on the track. The only difference in these bogies is that the rescue bogie will have a carriage for its own supercapacitors. Ultimately the system still becomes reliant on the batteries that the slave bogie will be carrying.

This week I worked more on the slave bogie. I was able to find the CAD for the slave bogie that last years team made. From this CAD model, I was able to alter it to fit the design specifications that we had imposed for this years slave bogie. This included removing the motors from the slave bogie as well as the steering. The route selection has also been removed but will be replaced later for a system that fits into the third rail. Further alterations include finding a way to bind the drive bogie and slave bogie together. There was also a presentation this week from a Futran representative that said that we much be careful of the information that we publicly disclose. He had made the assumption that everyone was under an NDA when in fact no one has been required to sign one. I foresee this to be a problem in the future.