The purpose of lab 10 was to take the design the engineers chose in the previous labs and make the Advance Energy Vehicle complete the goals set by the Mission Concept Review in the most efficient way possible. To accomplish this, students created two separate codes. The first code used a low constant motor speed to complete the goals in the MCR, and the second code used short high powered pulses to complete the mission objective. Students also attempted to incorporate a servo brake arm to stop the AEV instead of reversing the motors an effort to decrease the energy used by the AEV in each run. Students attempted to test both codes, extracting the data after the runs to compare the amount of energy used for each code. The engineers saw that when the code functioned properly, the code using the short high energy pulses was more efficient than the low constant motor speed. The second code with the high energy pulses did not work consistently so the engineers reverted back to an older code that used a low energy consistent motor speed. The engineers also saw that the servo did increase efficiency, but it was temperamental—it would work some runs but not others. TO rectify this issue, the students removed the servo completely and reverted back to reversing the motors in order to stop the AEV.
This lab taught the engineers how to modify an existing code in order to make it more efficient. This is important because this encourages innovation in order to reach the most efficient and effective code possible. This is one of the foundation skills in engineering–being able to modify existing products in order to make them better. This lab was an example of that because students took an existing code and modified it to perform better.
Power vs. Time
Team Meeting Notes:
Date: 13–April–2016
Time: 10:30am-12:30pm
Members Present: Kailee Gulbin (KG), Ben Reed (BR), Paul Conway (PC), Grant Miller (GM)
Topics Discussed: Performance Test 3 Memo
Objectives:
Today’s main focuses were meeting as a team to discuss how to prepare an Memo for Performance Test 3, compiling the data, and discussing what to do about not having two separate codes.
To do:
-u.osu.edu (KG)
-Executive Summary (PC, KG, GM, BR)
Reflections:
-The u.osu page was not finished completely, need to uploading the memo when completed.
-The memo is not complete. Need to finish writing the conclusions and inputting the data and tables and figures.