Nikolas Mifsud Spartan Superway

This week, we gave out first major presentation. This was the first time of the groups outside of Full-Scale heard about our intention to change to the 2-bogie system. As such, there were quite a few questions regarding its advantages and how we planned to implement it. This week forward is where our work really begins. We are currently creating sketches of the bogies before getting a reference CAD model created.

This week brought some major changes to our plans for the project. After talking with Dr. Furman, we decided to follow Futran' s bogie system, consisting of a drive and slave bogie. We feel this is a better solution as it allows for various sizes of pods to run on the Superway with no modifications needed. This also provides more space for the bogie components to be laid out while providing a better grip to the drive bogie’s wheels.

This week, the entire full-scale bogie team met to talk about our plans. Due to our team designing the frame for all other teams to place their components inside of, we decided to take a step back this week and allow the other teams to come up with rough size estimates rather than restrict them to arbitrary size constraints that we pull from our limited knowledge of their systems. The motor team gave us their dimensions and many of the other team have a good idea of what their housings and general dimensions will be. It appears that our modifications to the existing model will mostly entail some resizing.

Our second team meeting consisted of reviewing the CAD from previous years and starting to come up with ideas. Our goal is to create the Bogie-Guideway interface as a framework for other teams to place their designs. As such, we will not be starting the modelling until we have size estimates and more meetings with the Full-Scale team as a whole. We are also working on the Bogie Sled itself. For this we will be tweaking the current design and implementing a suspension system to give the passengers a smooth ride.

During our first meeting, I joined the Full-Scale Bogie team. The team spoke with previous team members about what improvements are to be made and what needs to be created from scratch. We subdivided our team into groups focusing on individual sections of the bogie. I am working on the Bogie and Guideway Interface. We are designing the method of suspension and fit for the bogie. We will be collaborating with the Guideway Team closely  to ensure a successful design with a smooth ride.