Engineering Experience 4: Design a Small Solar Vehicle/2013: Team PM21

Introduction

This Wikiversity-page is designed to show the project work of Team PM21 concerning the Topic:Engineering_Education/Engineering_Experience_4:_Design_a_Small_Solar_Vehicle. Next to the official reports, that might be slightly altered for online publication, there will also be a weekly update on the process.

As this page undergoes constant change, flaws in layout and content might occur. They will be corrected as soon as possible, however Team T will not be held responsible for any consequences of mistakes.

Team & Logo

For administrational purposes this Team is known under the code PM21. For an enterprising aspect it has however been renamed to "Team T", derived from the parental organisation Group T [[1]]. For all later documents the group will be referred to as "Team T". The participating students are listed below.

Name	Function
Remmy Nshuti	Team Leader
Nele Rath	Team Member
Praveen Saragadam	Team Member
Régis Hakizimana	Team Member
Varsha Manda	Team Member
Abel Fitsum	Team Member

General Information

In this section are all documents listed, that are necessary to run a successful project.

Cooperation Contract

The cooperation contract, as agreed by all team members, states the following:

We all have agreed to meet once a week on Tuesday morning and Friday at 10 am will alternating depending on the deadline of that week. A report of each meeting will be carried out by any member of the group when it’s his/her turn for this task. We have agreed that these meetings will primarily be idea-sharing sessions to keep track of all data that each of the members is working on; a big amount of each member´s duties will have to be carried out outside these encounters.

At the same time, we have established some communication rules. Each of us will have to check the mail every day, deadlines will be met, absences will be communicated to the team leader beforehand and there will be a considerable amount of freedom for each of us to express our ideas in the collective tasks thanks to the wikiversity account already created by Nele Rath. As mentioned above, reports of meetings will be done weekly, keeping record of the meeting minutes. Two copies will be done, one for our coach Hu Yunhao who we will also meet once a week and another one for the project folder.

Several agreements have been made in order to run this project as scheduled. These agreements are on the part of communication as well as on the delivery of several documents.

As team members we should "Communicate, Communicate, Communicate”, “No Excuses" ,"No Blaming others”, “Always Support Other team members with immediate feedback and ideas”, “Always get Involved”, “Listen Actively".

As Part of becoming an engineer and gaining experience each team member is responsible for his actions and decisions that he makes in this interval.

Missing deadlines/ not fulfilling your tasks /not attending meetings would make the team member buy beer for the whole team.

Team analysis

Remmy will be the group leader and the person responsible for the correct functioning of the group, the project folder and the overall organization. He will be in charge of solar panel, sankey diagram and the softwares(Simulink and solidworks). Nele will focus on designing part, Simulink and calculation test; whereas Praveen will work on solar panel, solid works and collision test. Varsha will take care of designing part, solidworks, collision test and blogging wikiversity. Régis will deal with solar panel, gears, calculations and Simulink part. The advertising part will be done by the whole group together.

Plan of approach

The Plan of Approach functions as a contract between all the parties involved. This version is the suggestion by the team and is yet to be approved by the coach.

1. Introduction

The EE4 Electro-Mechanics project of Group T centers on the design of a small solar vehicle that will need to be approved by a coach of the formerly named institution and by the Umicore Solar team as the hypothetical customer. This Plan of Approach functions as a contract between the undersigning to determine goal, limitations and suppositions.

2. Contractors

The contractors are Hu Yunhao as our coach, a representative of the Umicore Solar team and the team PM21, also called Team T, with the following team members, all second year engineering students:

o Remmy Nshuti (Leader)

o Regis Hakizimana

o Nele Rath

o Varsha Manda

o Praveen Kumar Saragadam

3. Goals

Our terminal target is delivering a functional miniature model of a solar car, a vehicle entirely run on solar power. This goal will be reached by several sub-goals.

By Friday 15/02 we will present our planning of the project. In the following weeks necessary changes will be made to the plan. Each team member will also demonstrate his understanding of solar panels and DC-Motors via an online assignment that is due Friday 22/02.

In the course of the project Team T will also study gear ratios and test their ideas and theories with the software Simulink and will hand in the results of the design, solar panel and DC-motor tests by Friday 22/03.

Team T is then going into the final stage with real world testing and the design is represented with a 2D drawing. On Friday 10/05 Team T will present a full report on the progress made and be ready to take part in the Solar Car Race between different models of small solar vehicles. All requirements for this race will be fulfilled.

Furthermore all team members agree to undergo two tests about the covered topics and aim to shine with their knowledge.

4. Limitations

The project is limited by several factors. According to the study plan of Group T, each student is expected to spent approximately 83 hours on this project, and the project deadlines are also predefined, thus the workload will have to be arranged accordingly and in-depth studies of side aspects might not be possible due to the time limitation.

The performance of the solar car model will experience limitations due to the absence of liberty to choose solar panels and specific motors, as these are given by the coach.

Also the race regulations might influence the performance of the solar car. Furthermore our workspace will be limited to the facilities of Group T and the FabLab, thus we only have specific machines available. This will also influence the choice of material, as the processing needs to be practical and manageable. The choice of material will also depend on the cost, as the model needs to be financed entirely by the team. A maximum amount of 200 Euro has therefore been agreed on.

A severe limitation is the availability of software licenses. As this will prevent the team to work in parallel on a program, this will cost time and experience with the program.

5. Suppositions

We assume that all relevant design criteria are clearly stated in the project manual as found on Toledo. We furthermore take it as given, that technical and environmental problems out of our power can occur and influence the functioning of the solar car during the demonstration. Also human failure like sickness can affect the project work and can only be compensated by the team to an extent.

WBS & Gantt chart

To distribute and tackle work effectively, a Work-Breakdown-Structure was created and with the help of a Gantt chart, tasks were assigned to the individual team members with an estimate of working hours.

Meeting Reports

A short summary of the events and decisions of every mayor meeting can be found in the files below.

Report Case 1

This first report will show our idea of the design of the solar car. It will describe in detail the reasons behind certain decisions (e.g. material) and the calculations for our results (e.g. optimum gear ratio).

Report Simulink

To simulate the behavior of our model, we can also use the Matlab program Simulink. The following file explains how and why.

Report Case 2

The final report will show our result of this project in detail.

Blog

Week 1

Having recovered from the exams period, we were directly digging into the new project. After an Introduction Session, it was going back once more to work, work, work. Having found our team, we split the work up, as we had only half a week to meet our first deadline. The Team name and Logo had to be discussed, Cooperation Contract and Plan of Approach formulated and Work-Breakdown-Structure and Gantt chart drawn up, revised and finalized.
With other courses also demanding their time, this was quite a handful to do, but with the team joining hands to pull the workload together, we managed to complete the task well in time.

Week 2

With a flu wave knocking out half of the team, we are struggling to make process and see us forced to limit our self the the bare necessities. In the following week we thus will reorganize our time schedule, as we also welcomed Abel as a new team member. An new assignment about solar panel characteristics showed that the team can work together even handicapped and in a new constellation. Also a small online test helped us focus on our task and revise new knowledge.

Week 3

This week we learned more about the race strategy and gear ratio determination. That in mind we brainstormed design ideas and checked with our coach about the regulations. Narrowing the gos and no-gos down, we decided on doing individual research, so that we could finalize the design decision by the beginning of week 4.

Week 4

With a lot of good design possibilities, going from fast to fancy, we had a hard decision to make. Eventually we agreed on one design and, after a seminar about Simulink, focused on different parts of the project. With everybody specializing one mayor working area, we hope to work as effectively as possible.

Week 5

It is starting to get a bit more intense. With the next deadline in week 6, we really need to speed up, to get all the work done. Everybody made good progress in his field, but small things need to be discussed and agreed on, so that we are coherent in our work. A meeting with our coach proofed to be helpful to keep us on track.

Week 6

While we now actually are getting results for the calculations and Solid Works design, we are also facing tension within the team. When team members do not or only late show up for team meetings and can not show the work they were supposed to do, this makes cooperation difficult. With the deadline approaching, we do not really have time to discuss that matter, but only redistribute work, so that everything will be done in time. In the following week, we will have some serious conversations planned.

Intermediate Process Report

Introduction

This Process report will show how we have managed to conduct our work through these 6 weeks. We will point out what made our team Process go smoothly and while also pointing out what incidents hampered the working processes. In other words, it will sum up the weekly blog entries.

Process Report

During these 6 weeks our work mainly revolved our decisions which were made during meetings which were conducted on Tuesdays every week. These meeting were the backbone to our Process. Every member had to explain what new features, advancements, problems, or information he /she have found. He/she had the task to explain his/her part in a mini demonstration or sometimes manual calculation. This will give an idea to everyone where we are going as a team. The work Process was made smooth by this action.
During the 1st week it was a formal group introduction. It was a get together to know each other. Although all of us were from the same group it was a randomly picked group and it was first time for us working together. We had to submit the gent chart,WBS and cooperation contract. The tasks were divided individual.
During the 2nd week we had to hand the deadline so everyone was quite busy finalizing those details. It was completed with little problems since it was same thing as we have done for other EE projects.
During the 3rd week we had our 1st seminar on solar cell characteristics and we were ready to measure our ideal power we can get for our motor from the solar panel. With the help of our coach it went well. We got all our results and got ready to put them all together.
The 4th week begun with a meeting where we made some import decision on the base, basic shape, wheels and also new tasks were assigned. There was a pitch from members of the team, after some discussion we chose ideas we considered to be good and agreed to move forward with that. We also did a restructuring of tasks to fit this new change. We all agreed to do our tasks individually and present our finding and question during 5th week.
The 5th week was a mini presentation for each other. We explained to each other how calculation, designs and similink were done. We saw good results and also some problem. We agreed to ask our coach and do further work on them.

Conclusion

The work Process is going well all deadline were kept up with. But like all group tasks we are faced with some problems. We have seen individual strength in each other but communication as a group still needs to more smooth. The team spirit also should be increased; we can achieve this when we spend more time together and see our work coming more practical and less individual work such calculation are finished. All team members are not going on the same rate. This can be solved by more motivation and inclusion into the time.

Week 7

The feedback session was very informative concerning the upcoming test. However, we got little feedback about our results and design ideas. The plan for the easter holidays is simple, yet exciting. With the 3d models done as stl. files, we will make our very first attempt to 3d print and laser in the Fablab. Let's hope it will work as planned!

Week 8

After some minor delays, mistakes and and corrections, all parts made in the FabLab are done and all that is left is to put the pieces together. At the same time we are having a look at the additional tasks that need to be completed for the Case 2.

Week 9

Wit our first version ready, we were nervous to see how it would do on the test track. On the bright side, it was indeed moving forward with and acceptable speed. To be throuthful though, it did fail, as our guiding system rather encouraged a collision with the side rails, than to smoothen the crash and enable the car to continue it's race. After consulting the coaches and looking at other SSVs, several solutions were proposed and will be tried out during the week, so that we will have fixed this problem in due time.

Week 10

After making improvements and seeing our SSV finally work, we are working on the last assignments to be done for our final report, but it seems we can manage this project without too much stress.

Week 11

Due to the weather the race has been post pone, and as expected we did not win any design or innovation prices. A meeting with our coach gave us helpfull feedback, so that we can finish off our project. With everything handed in, we only need to wait for our race and study for the test. Attached to this is the Process Report, showing our development throughout the project.

Links

• [1] http://www.groept.be/