Wednesday, September 2nd

    To begin the meeting, each student had "lightning" speeches to present in order to outline what we learned from our research on the project, and what we saw as our goals for this year.  After receiving feedback on the presentations, we were introduced to the different units that the Spartan Superway project would be divided into.  This year, there were three main fields: the small-scale model, the full-scale model, and structural analysis.

    The small-scale model helps to showcase the basis of the technologies that we plan to implement to the project.  Some of the main functions we wish to display include integrated solar panels, vehicle routing, and rail system design.  Although it is not a fully accurate representation of the project, it helps people to visualize and imagine the project as we do.  The scale model is more realistic, and helps to show off the rail-switching mechanism that allows the vehicle to maneuver the tracks.  Finally, the analysis team is responsible for finite element analysis (FEA) of the structure, and suggesting alterations that improve the safety of the overall design.

    For the time being, I chose to join the finite element analysis, since I am already familiar in CAD and programming, but would like some hands-on experience with FEA.  I met my group members Ian Johnsen, Ivan Tapia, and Steve Trevillyan.  We started listing general goals for the semester and year, and talked about how we would achieve them.  The goals included building a 5 ft rail model for full-scale testing, analyzing possible temperature and loading responses using FEA, and redesigning and improving last year's design to use less material and increase safety.  At the end of the meeting, we exchanged contact information to further discuss the project.
    Since the meeting, I have researched further back in the project, and studied what types of changes that have been made over the years.  Mainly, I looked at the design process of the rail system, and thought of various loading conditions that may occur.  I have also looked into finite element analysis programs such as ANSYS and SolidWorks, and have been learning the differences between them. Going beyond our own system design, I looked into similar types of transportation being researched and implemented around the world.  I tried to find the best and worst aspects of each one, and considered what solutions we could adopt and how we could learn from the designs of others.