Daniel's Spartan Superway Project

During this past two weeks, I gather valuable information from different teams and from our weekly team meetings. First, we are working on the fourth rail system and the next figure shows where we intended to place the wayside system. figure 1: wayside representation of the fourth rail system Second, the I have concluded the preliminary CAD design to pick the current coming from the DC power supply as shown in the next figure. This shows the order of the of each element to pick up the current. The minimum dimensions for the base(guideway rail to the slave boogie is about 2.96 in. We are waiting for the teams to conclude their design so this mechanism can be mounted on the slave. . figure 2: current pick up system and its necessary components for current pick up The next figure represents the shoe current pick up. This includes the 1045 carbon steel which holds the shoe collector and the carbon pad. figure 3: shoe pad collector pick up system Other areas I have

For this week,  we brainstormed possible locations for the shoe current collector mechanism. however, any model created will have to be redesigned to fit into the bogie design and the guideway rail. Also, class time serve to get feedback on the other teams and their implementation plans. As of now, there are two areas or rails where shoe current will have to push to make contact.  One will be the guideway rail. and the other will be the third rail that the guideway team is proposing. Once we see the final version of their design will be deciding on mounting our mechanics and the shoe current contact  

This week was invested in rapid prototyping designs and possible location of components. Then we also work on supercapacitor capabilities using LTspice to adequately size them for load conditions. Maxwell representatives provided a circuit that interfaces their supercapacitors. However, we need more knowledge on how to manipulate to  get accurate results for the condition we set.

This week was all about getting ready for presentation and showing our defined project objectives as a team and individually. one of my responsibilities includes CAD design for the mechanism to harness current. Additionally, we are also working on the supercapacitor calculations. Also, we had numerous conference calls with Maxwell representatives to educate ourselves with the supercapacitors capabilities, performance, and conditions. From the presentations, there were numerous assumptions and conditions explained that our team needs to consider. First, the bogie- integration team has proposed to design a new bogie design second, the high-density motors team will get their motor sometime October.