The Electrical Team has completed energy calculations to determine the required motor horsepower for a range of velocities, masses, and aerodynamic drag. They have also compared the required energy with the solar output in order to begin with energy management strategies. They are still in their research phase, but have finalized their decisions on some major components, including the motor, …
Spring Week 5: Completed Electric Housing and Wing Assembly
The Propulsion team was originally having trouble getting the tilt-rotor’s servos to rotate the correct direction and they have found a solution: using a programmable servo. The team is still working on replacing the servos on the tilt-rotor prototype. Because the replacement servos are different from the original ones, Propulsion must replace all the servos, on the left and right …
Spring Week 4: Wiring Issues Leads To Burnt Servos, Visualization of Obstacle Avoidance System
The Propulsion team performed their first flight test with the tandem tilt rotor prototype last Saturday. Unfortunately, the test failed and they burnt the 4 servos on left nacelle. They found that the power wires were in the wrong places and too much power was put into the servos. The replacement servos were on back order, so Propulsion ordered different …
Spring 2017 Week 4-6: Servo Connections
Due to time constraints, the team has decided to change the goals of this year’s project. This year, we will focus on the motion study of the fins using three different fin designs. By next year, we will measure the efficiency between the fins. For the last few weeks, Alex, Damian, and Tim have been working on the tank and …
Autonomous Boat Week 6 Update
Autonomous Boat Week 6 Update It’s week 6 of Spring Quarter and we’re almost finished with fabrication. We are preparing the boat for a launch by the end of June. We have everyone working on their own respective parts and the categories below best summarize the overall group’s effort. The photo shows this week’s progress made by the mechanical design …
Week 5 Spring – Project X
For subsystem 2 the solenoid valve has been connected to the microcontroller and a transistor to change the state of the valve, the system is changing states; however, the air flow is not being released from the outputs, its believe that is due to the low airflow pressure. The reason for trying the solenoid is to regulate the amount of …
First Official Sponsor: MSC Software
Big thank you to our first official sponsor, MSC Software! MSC Software is a global leader in helping product manufacturers to advance their engineering methods with simulations software and services. With the help of MSC Software, we can optimize the design of our solar car by using their product to test our car’s dynamic capabilities.
Chassis Load Testing
According to regulations, we have to sustain a 5g load in all directions of the chassis. Here are pictures from our latest testing. We are currently experimenting with different pipe sizes to find the best compromise between strength and weight. Our chassis has a mirror feature that we did not anticipate on deviating our results. For the front crash, there …
Week 4 Spring – Project X
Motor can do partial rotation, it can be controlled to release in the step of a wedge which is equivalent to approximately an ounce of food. The motor has been successfully integrated with the power supply, we no longer have overheating issue and the motor is receiving the appropriate current and voltage. We will be using one power supply, it …
Obstacles with the Spectrometer
We cut out ~1.5 inch cube pieces of wood (poplar, rock maple, red oak, red alder, hickory, hem fir, and walnut) to compare their radiating spectral profiles and temperatures when red hot. We lit these pieces on fire, blew out the flame, and used our spectrometer to find the spectral profile. We also had attached a thermocouple to the surface …