Assignment 3: Update

During the meeting on 9/16/15, team members from fail safe team gathered around and share their ideas. Considering the fact that the design of the bogie be similar to existing bogie, we all came to an agreement that, addition of the upstop wheel (3rd wheel) is very logical, since the wheel will stabilize the bogie and will keel the bogie from falling. Next, the team is focused on other fail safe mechanisms. One of the main goal of this week is to come up with a failing scenarios under any circumstances. On 9/23, the team will be discussing on how reasonable is that scenario and hopefully come up with a solution.
Lastly, I have read chapter 6 of Safety and Emergency Operations of the Fundamentals of Rapid Transit. This chapter gave me an idea of possible failing scenarios and a way to solve it. On our next meeting, we will be comparing the list of the failing scenarios and come up with a possible solutions.  

bogie design: Fail/safe.

The current design of the bogie only consist of two sets of wheels, load wheel (the big one) and the guide wheels (the one on the side). Since one the main goal of this year is to traverse up and down in  slope, adding a upstop wheel (3rd wheel, underneath the track) is very much required. The addition of the third wheel will not only aid on traveling up and down on a guideway, but will also keep the bogie from falling off. Additional pressure will be exerted when it is traveling at 17 degree, the upstop wheels shall reduce the pressure and stabilize the bogie.

Post3: Fail/Safe

Braking system has not really been addressed thoroughly in the previous reports. Since I'm a part of fail/safe team, emergency braking system in the bogie design would be key if the system fails due to technical error or catastrophic events. The emergency braking should be triggered manually and is equipped with traditional mechanical system. For example, all the rotating wheels of the bogie be chained together in such a way that once the emergency brake is triggered, the stretched  chain  would stop the wheels from rotating any further. Installation of a damper would give fluency to the braking process.

9/2/15 Update

After the lightening speech and intro to project group, I went around the hall and gave a thought to consider which group to be in. After some thinking and analyzing, I thought I would be most suited in the bogie team. The bogie team got split into sub-groups- suspension and fail/safe. I decided to be on the fail/safe group. Because we were running out of time, we were not able to have a major discussion on the project, but we did jotted down list of some points to specialize on for the semester. One of the point of the list was emergency braking system in case of system failure, natural disaster and etc. Since then, I have been reading reports on fail/safe design and reports from previous year, specializing in bogie. 

Introduction

Hello fellow Spartans. My name is Uday and I'm a senior in Mechanical Engineering at SJSU, concentrating on thermal system design. I transferred to SJSU from Deanza/Foothill on fall 2103. The versatility of the Spartan Superway drew me towards this project. I am looking forward to imply my knowledge and skills that I have learned and gained previously, on this project and help to make a proper modification to the Spartan Superway. Beside engineering, I am a sports fanatic and I love to travel to new places and explore the scenic views.