10/26/16

Following up on my task given to me by Claude a couple weeks ago, I was finally able to use his tape measure to go around downtown San Jose, measuring the widths of streets and sidewalks, to prepare for design of the space Spartan Superway could take up currently. Here are my results:

Jackson St. near 5th St.

N sidewalk 178, parallel (||) parking 99, street (two way) 275, diagonal parking 224, S sidewalk 182

4th near Washington

W sidewalk 161, parallel parking 94, bike lane 74, street (two way) 265, bike lane 101, || parking 101, E sidewalk 177

4th near St. John

W sidewalk 121, || parking 110, bike lane 134, street (one way, two lanes) 325, || parking 101, E sidewalk 177

2nd near San Fernando

E sidewalk 188, street (one way, two lanes) 289, midwalk area 186, lightrail 110, W sidewalk 177

San Carlos near Market

N sidewalk 118, N side of street 300, lightrail area 290, S side of street 259, S sidewalk 172

San Fernando near 6th

S sidewalk 205, || parking 85, bike lane 94, street (two way, with center turning lane) 407, bike lane 90, || parking 90, sidewalk 175

11th near San Fernando

E sidewalk 146, || parking 106, bike lane 75, street (one way, two lanes) 328, || parking 88, W sidewalk 176

Claude will use this information for his SolidWorks designs.

For this week, I am working with my group to formulate our Presentation 2. We've spent a lot of time working on this presentation, as we were lost with our direction last week and we are slowly regaining our plans. We've finished cutting out our laser-cut rapid prototype and just need to assemble it. The other members of the group are working on calculations. I'm focusing more on goals and deliverables, as well as problem statements, comparisons, and anything that is general to the presentation.

10/19/16

We didn't do too much this week since we are backlogged on gaining access to a working laser cutter to create our rapid prototype (interlocking column). Mainly we just met with Ron to discuss the information he found out in Europe about a project similar to Spartan Superway.

This week, I will be using a tape measure to measure the width of streets and sidewalks all across San Jose. I will also be researching anything else I can find about vibrations in railway systems. Furthermore, I'll be preparing the group for Presentation 2.

10/12/16

This week we focused on our rapid prototype and development of the interlocking column design. Basically, the pieces we will laser-cut look something like the picture on the left, and will resemble something like the picture on the right when assembled. We hope to gain access to the ME lab within this week so we can construct our prototype.

Furthermore, this week I turned in my first writing assignment, regarding Spartan Superway's implications involving global, local, environmental, social, and economic issues. This essay reflected on the project's potential difficulties in implementation with respect to the city of San Jose, including possible other cities to follow.

10/5/16

This week, we were supposed to present our group presentations, but there was insufficient time. We will present on 10/5 and it'll be so great and deserving of an A+.

Last week, my task was to design a rough sketch of what the new guideway would look like. Here are some screenshots of my designs:

We compiled our designs and decided to go with Claude's design with some renditions.

This week we will be working on designing new structure beams. It'll feature a design similar to the Solomon's knot, with interlocking steel pieces filled with concrete. We've been coordinating with a team located in South Africa regarding a design still in the works. We'll compare with Bengt's design and decide which we like better. Furthermore, we will work on a rapid prototype made out of cardstock or some similar material, using a laser cutter.

9/28/16 - Paseo Prototyping Challenge

This post refers to the Paseo Public Prototyping Challenge. The purpose is as follows:

The Paseo Public Prototyping Challenge is designed to incubate solutions to pressing social and environmental problems through multidisciplinary collaboration and technological innovation.

Multidisciplinary student teams from San José State University will be selected, mentored, and provided seed funding to develop civic innovation prototypes for presentation at the Paseo Public Prototyping Festival – an arts, culture and technology festival held at the newly opened SJSU/ Hammer Theatre Center in Spring 2017.

I attended the launch on 9/21/16. Here are some dimly-lit pictures proving that I was present:

              

The launch began with several important people discussing how important it is that people collaborate to fix a problem within the community. I've listed the speakers below.

• Dr. Lisa Vollendorf, Dean of College of Humanities and the Arts
• Danny Harris, Knight Foundation Program Director
• Paul Lanning, VP of University Advancement
• Sid Espinoza, Director of Philanthropy and Civic Engagement at Microsoft

These people all had the same general message. San Jose focuses on tech and innovation, yet our community is filled with rising housing prices and homelessness. We are the next generation of change and the leader of social movements. We need to shift our political attention to sustainable cities. Goal of zero bike and pedestrian deaths. Basically, this challenge is supposed to be the appeal to young people to fix the problems that the old people created, as is the case often for engineers. Our challenge is to prototype something cool with the chance to win $10,000. They even gave out raffle prizes of Intel Arduino and Edison and a Microsoft Edge 4. Personally, I think the raffle prizes were unnecessary and the event was a bore. But the cookies afterwards weren't half bad.

9/21/16

This week we are focusing more on specifications of how we will construct our new test track. Ron guided us towards how we should be tackling our tasks for the next couple weeks and we've brainstormed what to do if a car should crash into one of the support beams. The list of possibilities can be found on the Full Scale blog: http://fullscaletesttrack-2016-2017.blogspot.com/

We've decided on a layer of aluminum surrounding a layer of protective foam surrounding the support beam. I had thought it would be a neat idea to combine the two layers by using 

Duocel® aluminum foam, which is porous aluminum. Here are the specs:

Upon further research, this would've been too costly and perhaps not strong enough to withstand the force of a car crash, which we estimated to be around 3,336,000 N of force. Thus we decided on aluminum, which is ductile yet light, on the outside. The inside would be some kind of foam so the vibrations from hitting the aluminum wouldn't shatter the beam itself. Some materials we're looking at are HR polyurethane (commonly used in mattresses) and ethafoam. For future use, we thought we might contact this company http://www.houseoffoam.net/contact.htm for assistance because they're local.

Next, I need to design a test track rough estimate of a model on SolidWorks. Since none of us know the dimensions of the bogey, it'll be interesting to see how our models turn out.

9/14/16

Updates

I'm very relieved that we've finally been given some guidance on what exactly is the goal of our project. It was strenuous to be tasked with a completely new project that none of the teammates had any knowledge on. I'm sure over time we'll become more accustomed with vibrations, but it's still very daunting right now.

I'm excited to start designing what the new guideway will look like, though I'm a bit disappointed it won't incorporate any changes in bogey design, since we have to use the current bogey in our testing. (It has a ton of wheels!) SolidWorks will be fun to use again, and I'm interested in learning more about the built-in load testing features. I'm especially interested in learning about shock absorbers and integrating them into the new suspension design. It will hopefully turn out well! I'm a little apprehensive that I've been chosen as the team leader, but hopefully my team will be there throughout the whole process to support the work we're doing together.