Engineering Experience 4: Design a Small Solar Vehicle/2014: Team PM13

Name
Solar Ryders

Logo
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coollogo_com-152981519.jpg

Introduction
Our Main goal for EE4 is to design and achieve an extroordinary SSV (Small Solar Vehicle), drives with highest speed and hits the ball and resists to the collision. Team 'Solar Ryders' makes the dreams comes true. With our team effort and confidence we will look forward for best results and will try to construct an most innovative car.

Plan Of Approach
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_RYDER.pdf

Co-operation Contract
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cooperation_Contract101.pdf

WBS
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_Chart.pdf

Revised Gannt Chart
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gantt_chart_final_eng.pdf

Design Description
we took the shape of our car from an eagle we wanted our car to look like an eagle. The beak of the eagle has the hitting material and will hits the ball. Our solar car is designed in solidwoks and the dimensions are 30*18*0.4 centimeters.We used plexi glass of 4mm to construct our car. Gears we used Compound gear system for solar car.THe compound gear consists of 4 gears and the gear with 60 teeth is attached to the shaft and that drives the rear wheels. A 10 teeth gear is fixed to the motor and 20 teeth and 40 teeth form the compound gear. The 10 teeth gear turns the 40 teeth gear and simultaneously 20 teeth gear also moves and turn the 60 teeth gear. So the final gear ratio is 12.

we used 4 wheels to car then 2 guiding wheels to keep our car move in straight path. For the hitting component we used a steel plate 10*4*0.2 cms and it is attached at our car front in such a way that the center of the steel palte is 8.6 cm above the ground.

Experimental Analysis
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EXPERIMENTAL_ANALYSIS.pdf

Week 1
This week the team was just organized. The members came to know each other. We named our team name as "Solar Ryders ". Also we designed the logo. We studied the project manual together and discussed the work breakdown structure and Gantt chart. We also drafted a list about the things we need to write in the wbs and fill the Gantt chart and arranged everyone’s timetable.we also started working out on the basic design of our SSV.

Week 2
In this week, we had our second seminar, we measured our solar panel. The Seminar was held by our coach who introduced the measurements of the solar panel and basic information about the DC motor. Subsequently, we measured the currents and voltages of the slide rheostat and then calculated the diode factor m via the formula I = Isc - Is(eU/m*N*Ur-1).At last, we got some feedback on the Cooperation Contract, Plan of approach, Gentt chart, WBS, Meeting report ,Team name and logo. Everything was OK except the cooperation contract and gantt chart had some mistakes,so coach gave us some advice.

Week 3
24-2-14 to 2-3-14 this week we started working on simulink,intially we had problems with simulink,we decided to work in two members,try to analyse the problems and solve them.So we shared the among us and ayon and bin started working on the problem we are facing in simulink and veera and eswar were looking for solution for the problems.

week 4
3-3-14 to9-3-14 Eswar found some information about wheels and bearings which are suitable for our SSV. and aoyu did some research on a matlab, which can be sued to calculate appropraite gear ratio and bin was helping me with simulink.

week 5
10-3-14 to 16-3-14 It was a tough week for us we have very less time to complete our SSV part 1 report and this week me and eswar also started working on solids works and we are finding difficult and other team members will install solidworks software in their laptops and will help us during the week end.

WEEK 6
17-3-14 to 23-4-14 This week we have to finish two important reports, Case SSV Part 1 and Case Simulink. Everyone works hard on his or her own part, especially aoyu,bin,amar and ramesh. Some problems happen to the Simulink, they spent a lot of time to solve these problems. Finally we finished everything successfully and the final version of gear ratio is 6. Based on this, we modified our Sankey Diagram report and make every report correspond to each other.

There was no seminar Tuesday. The coach Tan Ye told us some information about these two cases' reports and the individual test after the Easter holiday. From next week on we will bulid our SSV in reality and connect Fatlab for some help. The case SSV Part 2 will be started, too. Aoyu divided the tasks to everyone basically.

we ordered gears in online website conrad and expected to recieve in next week.

week 7
24-3-14 to 30-3-14 we got the feed session from our coach tan ye, he made some mistake in gear ratio calculation so he was to kind and explained us the full content and gave us necessary tips and gave us more motivation to work so we started with new commitment and in different way and started to create an excel file for velocity, acceleration and enengy for every secounf upto 10 seconds for one specific gear ratio and sepecific mass using the formulas given to us in seminar sessions. then agian we sat with matlab and simulink and calculated our gear ratio and finilaised to gear ratio 12, with ssv mass 1.25kgs.

week 8
31-3-14 to 6-4-14 last weekend me and eswar worked on solidworks and completed our design and all other team members accepted to the design. So on momday we went to fablab.there they suggested to use inkscape software, told us to draw 2-d sketching in inscape so we came back and worked on inkscape and again wednesday we went ot fablab and we had some confusion in choosing the material finally amar said to opt plexi glass so we took 4mm plexi glass then we gave the inkscape file to laser printer for cutting and in 15 min the laser machine finished its job and our parts are ready for assembling.

There was a individual text on Tuesday, which was a theoretical test about Matlab (Simulink) and SSV Part 1. On friday we recieve our gear from conrad and we immediately started working on compound gear ratios.

week 9
7-4-14 to 13-4-14 This was a week of few failures. We assembled our SSV, so it would be made completely out of Plexiglas. The main advantages of this design were that the SSV was more aerodynamic, but is was too heavy and better looks. One cool thing we discovered is that you made a bend   to he Plexiglass by using heat. we tested it. but it was too slow and we measured the weight it was 1.8kgs so we made the gear ratio calculations again and increase our gear ratio to 15. When v2.0 was ready, we tested it, but it went fast that it jumped and it was so stiff. So again we made some minor adjustments at the design and started building the final version of our SSV, SSV v2.1.

week 10
14-4-2014 to 20-4-2014 now our car is ready and this week we started to solve ssv part 2 now we came to know about power losses and sankey diagrams. We divided the work among the team and every one is working on their part meanwhile veera also worked on the process report. still we found some problems with our ssv. it is not going straight we tried to allign the wheel in right direction and we tried to construct the wheels again.

week 11
21-4-2014 to 27-4-2014 our coach saw the the svv and gave few remarks on it. he said the design was so complicated and asked us to redifne the structure and also gave the idea of guiding wheels and improve the gear box as their was lot of friction in the gears. so we again started working on the designing of guiding wheels. We are not sure abot these guiding wheels because it was too annioying for us and it is given a differnet shape for our car but we have to make them in order to move our car in straight path.

week 12
28/4/2014 to 4/5/2014 This week we improved our car design. We finalised the guiding wheels design and make them cut in laser printer then we fixed it to our car. Our car is ready for the test run. The first run was successful but still there is friction in the gears so we wanted our gears to run smooth we tried to assemble them as close as we could and lubricate them.

next we bought some magnets and fixed to iron bars of 2mm thick to solar panel with 2 way tape and the magnets to our solar car so that the solar panel is fixed tightly. the idea was new, intially we had a doubt in stability but after doing so we found that the magnets are holding solar panel tightly, so we had no worries.

week 13
11/5/2014 to 18/5/2014 this week we presented our car in groupt we explained about our car to all the spectators and professors the magnet concept was appreciated by every one. Next week we all set ready for the final race

week 14 Final Race
20/05/2014 Final Race Afer all we had a bad day our car dint run during the race in the first race, the 10 teeth gears attached to the motors came out unfortunately, then we tried to fix it and made it ready our next run. But after there was some problem with big gear, when we were fixing the small the gear the big gear moved out of the allignment which we dint observe in that short period of time, then our car dint move in the 2nd race too then finally eswar took proper care of it then fixed evey thing in evey short time. then all set ready for 3rd race and the race started our car ran with with full speed but unfortunately the guiding wheel got stuck and our car has hit the wall and stopped. its all over we couldnt do anything the race is done.

latter on after all the race had finished we tried for one last time, and unexpectedly our car went with super speed and had hit the ball we would belive with our own eyes and we even tried it again and once again it went it had hit the ball. We were disappointed agian our car was working perfectly before the race and after the race what a shame for us. But our hard work was something we should not forget and alteast we learnt something out of it