Nikolas Mifsud Spartan Superway

This week, we gave presentation #2 as an update on our project progress. Now that we have fully committed to a 2 bogie system, the design work has really picked up the pace. The drive bogie is through its preliminary stages and is ready for some finishing work before being sent off for FEA analysis. As CAD lead, I have taken on most of the design work for the drive bogie as it is being built from scratch. The goal was and continues to be looking towards the half-scale bogie as inspiration. The design used for the half-scale bogie is simplistic while having the potential to bear a large load. Due to our design relegating the majority of the load to the slave bogie, the drive bogie can be made of cheaper materials and have the design simplified even more. The slave bogie modifications are being taken on by my group members. The design will be based on the currently built bogie in the Superway warehouse. That bogie was created with the intention of bearing the load as well as providing ...

This week, we began preparing for Presentation 2 which is scheduled for October 24th, 2018. This presentation is a chance for us to show how much progress we have made since Presentation 1. The major differences over presentation 1 for our group is a much clearer vision for our project. Prior to presentation 1, we were very recently introduced to the concept of a 2 bogie system. We knew almost instantly that this system would work better for the ideas we wished to implement. As Presentation 2 approaches, I can confidently say we are in a much more solid place with the project. We have a good understanding of Superway and the systems relevant to our project. In addition, we have a solid concept for our new drive bogie. The CAD for the initial version is nearly complete. From there, FEA will be performed and the model will be tweaked and prepared for prototyping.

This week was spent refining the drive bogie design to a more concrete idea. This version still requires a set of lower clamping wheels but represents a our vision for the drive bogie.  The Drive bogie is meant to be a small bogie with the sole purpose of propulsion. This bogie will be very lightweight and will not be load bearing. This bogie will allow the slave bogie to be more simplistic and used to carry more components. The next step for the coming weeks is to finish the drive bogie design and modify bogies from previous years for use as a slave bogie. From there, we will perform FEA to ensure the designs can handle their intended loads. Below is a picture of the current drive bogie iteration without wheels:

With the basic ideas laid out over the last few week, I began CAD modelling our drive bogie. Based closely on the Futran deployment in Africa, the drive bogie will not be load bearing and will serve solely as propulsion. This bogie will use the in-hub wheels supplied by the motor subteam. This bogie will contain all required components to to be fully independent and able to move while attached to a slave bogie or as its own unit.

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.