Week 4

Week 4 Update

This week, we decided to focus on the presentation attached below. We identified our set objectives and continued to work on them throughout the week. So far, our objectives remain:

• Design the junction system on the track that allowed bogies to switch tracks (ideal for entering/leaving stations).

• Design the curved track section to ensure the bogie does not fly off the rail or inconvenience the passengers on board.

• Adding another rail to create a three-rail system that would further support our bogie

• Work with the other full scale teams to ensure their systems are able to integrate with the track we design

The first two objectives are going hand in hand because we need to accomplish one to be able to accomplish the other. The same can be said about the last two objectives. As stated before, our plan is to continue on from previous years. We are keeping their design in mind as well as modifying certain aspects. We are looking into other tracks that already exist (Milotek and Futran) to take into consideration other designs. The track that was provided by previous years takes inspiration from Futran's existing system. As of now, we are still hoping to get our hands on other Futran files that could help us with our design so that we don't have to design from scratch.

Moreover, our research seems to indicate that we are on the right path and we are continuing on to designing. According to our Gantt chart, in the next week we are designing and finalizing our constraints. We want to ensure that our dimensions are universal throughout the groups (Bogie, Guideway, Solar, Wayside Power Teams). We are aware of a possible bogie redesign, and we will be taking into consideration any new dimensions as we will design around them. We are also looking into feasibility of manufacturing our track, which will ultimately affect our design. 

Below is our first presentation. Some improvements need to be made for our next presentation from the feedback received. For our next presentation we will improve our assertion titles, as some could be better. We will also implement a Functional Specifications slide to quantify some of the goals and targets we are looking to hit, such as the length and height of the track we are going to build, total weight and weight capacity of the finished product, and maximum deflection numbers for the track itself.