(Tan) Solar for Full-Scale Futran

This week, I still worked on the CFD and prepared for the second presentation. There were updates on meshing methods as well as the other setups, see the result below.  The drag force and lift force got improved comparing to the previous simulation; however, the drag- coefficient and lift- coefficient still do not make sense.  For the next step, I will talk to Dr.Thurlow and other people who have more experience in CFD to take a look at my setup.  After that, I will work on FEA to complete our analysis. 

In these two weeks, I was working with my team to build the solar rack. I was learning how to use the band saw to cut the C- channel. It was time-consuming; however, I was able to cut the C-channels faster. For the CFD, I was able to improve the meshing and get better with setting up the simulation. In Figure 1, the result of drag and lift coefficient, and drag and lift force were succesful calculated. This result will then be used to calculate for FEA, the stress analysis. Therefore, I will be able to test to see if either my team's design work or not. Figure 1: Results of CFD simulation to find for drag and lift coefficient, and drag and lift force In Figure 2, it shows how the velocity behaves when it hit the wall. In this case, the wall is the curved solar panel rack. When wind hits the top of the curvature wall, it generates a maximum wind speed on the top and a minimum speed at the bottom. This behavior of the wind creates a pressure difference between the top and...

In the week 7 & 8, I focused on the Bill of Materials and CFD simulation. For the Bill of Materials, I figured out what components to buy such as charge controller, converter, transformer, and batteries. Since the motor from the Bogies team needs a power of 150W and run on DC voltage, it is necessary to have a transformer that can supply an exact power of 150W to the team. The updated Bill of Materials can be seen in Figure 1 below. Figure 1: Bill of Materials for added components For the CFD simulation, I was learning how to use the software and how to set up the boundary conditions to get the most accurate result. In the video, it showed my progress on learning CFD simulation. I expect to finish in week 9, so that I can use the result such as drag coefficient, drag force, drag lift, and lift force from CFD simulation to run the FEA. 

This week, I focused on the design of water gutter and finished the BOMs. For the water gutter, the main purpose is to collect the water and reuse it. In Figure1, a water gutter was designed so that it prevents leaves from falling into the gutter, which may cause the flowing of water gutter. This design will then be implemented with my ME106 project ( see Figure 2). Figure 1: A design for water gutter with helmet In Figure 2, I will use a turbidity sensor to sense the quality of water and an ultrasonic sensor to measure the water level inside a container. When the detected water is clean, a valve will be opened to let the clean water goes in while the valve for the dirty container remaining close. All the data will then be collected by using Matlab. Figure 2: A block diagram to show how the clean water will be collected  Also, I did some research and helped my partner completed the bill of materials. All the materials that we need for the project includes th...

For week3, my team and I had a meeting with Dr.Furman and the management team. We discussed with the clients to see what were the requirements they had so we could change our design to meet their requirements. The two main requirements that the clients asked were the curvature of the solar rack design and the water gutter. Therefore, next step for our team is to change the design.

This week, I did some research on the solar panel system. To have a fully functional structure for the Maker Faire,  we need a system that can provide enough energy for the full-scale bogie. For that to happen, we need a solar charge controller and a DC to AC inverter. There are various options to buy the solar charge controller and the inverter; however, we need to know for sure the total power output of eight solar panels before we can purchase them. For this week, my solar team needs to talk to Dr. Furman and full-scale team to ensure we are on the right track before we buy the solar charge controller and the inverter.