Daniel's Spartan Superway Project

After hearing feedback from both Dr. Furman, Dan Espinoza and Ron Swenson about the safety of third rail system, the team we decided to change the proposal for fourth rail wayside power pick up.  This variation led me to focus on systems that use a fourth rail wayside electrical pick up.  I have found that the London Underground is a rapid transit system that uses this technique.                                                                                                                                                                                                     Having settled on the system pick up. the next target was to decide what type of mechanism that is simple and efficient we can use for our current collector. a simple spring damper system was proposed by Donald, I have made a concept design to be implemented as the mechanism to make contact with the current. This concept idea was used for the first presentation and will be following on this design the fol

For week three, we have provided our project proposal  and the objectives of the wayside power. We have proposed to provide a third rail system to power our the full scale bogie and controls.  Then, we proposed to integrate super capacitors to power the bogie when it is in motion  or has momentum. the introduction to supercapacitors will be ideal when there is a junction and no wayside power is needed. To keep in mind we consider the wayside power to kick in when there is acceleration and deceleration  or more explicitly when the bogie is coming/leaving the station.  After the project proposal presentation, Dan  and Ron mentioned that the third rail will not be ideal and there are danger associated. This matter will be discussed with the group next time we meet. in conclusion, we have brainstormed and researched more ways to provide power to move the bogie.

Following the first week of introduction of the whole Spartan Superway Project, we were separated into different teams and sub-teams.  Under the Full-Scale Guideway and the Bogie Team, i have chose to be part of the Wayside Power sub-team. The group members of the sub-team includes Tynan Winters and Donald Lou and myself.  I have already started browsing the files in the website inist.org where i could find archives of past work and specifically about wayside power and the need for it. In addition, we are preparing for the  three minute lighting talk about the purpose of our sub-team and the possibilities to implement one of the designs in the whole project.