Blog #7 10/12-10/18

Hi,

This week our team attended the seminar about the ME195 Report hosted by Dr. Agarwal. We also continued our improvements of the track which are shown below in Figure 1. Figure 2 shows how the U-bracket is connected to the support post. We quickly resolved our little problem with converting the metric system to english units. We attempted some finite element analysis (FEA) but it was limited to single pieces and the program could not do a finite element analysis of the entire assembly and so we will try again tomorrow with the full solidworks edition at the engineering building. We were able to do Finite element analysis on the U-bracket shown in Figure 3. Figure 3 shows the displacement of the bracket when a 5lbf acts on the part. The orange arrows shows where the force is applied. The green arrows simulate how it would be mounted. Reference back to Figure 2 for how it is mounted. As we can see, the left side goes under compression which would cause the track to droop downwards and not keep the track uniform. This week we will finish the FEA, presentation PowerPoint, update Gantt Chart, and start working on our bill of materials.

Figure 1: Full track assembly

Figure 2: U-Bracket mounted to Support Post

Figure 3: FEA on U-bracket