Presentation 3 Cont. - December 5, 2018

For this week's meeting, the team was able to present their designs and stress analysis to the rest of the groups. In our presentation, the team was able to exhibit all of the stress calculations done through Solidworks Simulation. The yield safety factor was calculated for the bracket, third rail sleeve, and the straight and decline/incline aluminum rails. For the third rail sleeve, two analysis were done: one where 12 lbs of force was pushing down on the inside of the sleeve to hold up the third rail, and 12 lbs acting on the side to check if it could cushion three bogeys when doing the switch turns. The safety factors were 18 and 16.3, respectively. The safety factor for the bracket was 6, and the yield safety factor for the rails were 3.1 and 1.6. 

The rails had a smaller deflection than what the previous calculations gave us of at most 0.02 inches vs 0.08 inches. This means that deflections in the aluminum were minimal and would sufficiently hold up the bogey. The team was also able to touch on the BOJO tools visit. Daniel Bolin sat down and talked to us on molding the bracket would not be the best option. The bracket itself was too thick for injection molding and the cost of the mold would be too high for the amount of parts that we need. Professor Furman suggested that was use the central shop at the engineering building to water jet machine the brackets out of sheet metal or aluminum.

The team also talked about the track bender and the different designs that it went through. The 3-D model of the final design was showcased and we explained how the system would work. The team also touched upon the inductive charging on the track and how we plan on mounting the charger on one of the middle brackets. Below is a link to our presentation.

Presentation 3