CHOSEN DESIGN
As a team, we have now chosen a design that we thought perfectly combined creativity, awareness of global issues and an engineering mindset. We have met with the inventor to discuss a few final details and will be working on developing the design to incorporate our knowledge of mechanical engineering to make sure that the design can become a working invention!
SHORTLISTING
We are currently reading through all of the winning and highly commended designs in the Primary Engineer Leaders Awards. We are using a fair and recognised Design Methodology to choose between all of these entrants. We are considering lots of different factors in our decision including imagination and creativity, feasibility and how possible it is to manufacture a prototype with our budget and resources, as well as how significant the impact of the product will be in addressing the problem it aims to solve.
DESIGN SPECIFICATION
An important first step in a design project is to specify the objectives and functions of what the product has to do. This allows designers to create a kind of "design contract" that can be used as a set of rules or guidelines to make sure that the product contains all functions and features that need to be included in order for it to work.
CANDIDATE DESIGNS
Using the design specifications, the team brainstormed as many solutions as possible to fulfil these requirements and functions. After creating several different combinations, the team discuss advantages and disadvantages of different parts of the design, at this stage it is important to note constraints, and any trade-offs between different components in the design. In this project a common trade-off was in using electrical components like motors, pumps or propellors; these will all require an energy source either from heavy batteries or expensive marine solar panels - and we need to be careful when considering electronics in a marine environment, making sure they are in a waterproof environment.
DESIGN EMBODIEMENT
From brainstorming candidates, we now have a better idea of what mechanisms will work and what won't work. From here, the team started to develop a 3D Model of our prototype. This takes a lot of time and effort to consider all the parts that will make up the prototype, the team will need to consider the details, dimensions and materials used in each part. For the 'Whale of Litter' we are currently investigating the major components such as structures, propulsion, navigation and waterproofing.
COMPUTER MODEL
This video shows our 1st draft of how our whale looks like on CAD (fancy computer software). I know what you might be thinking where is the mouth? It doesn't look much like a whale, but for Mechanical Engineers it is important for our design to be functional first, and then we can make it look more like a whale. But trust us, it will! The video also gives you an insight of how we are going to assemble (or put together) the prototype which is a big focus for us over the coming months!
PROCUREMENT
This is just a fancy word Engineers use instead of 'shopping'. The team now have to procure (or shop for) the parts that we need to manufacture and build the final prototype. This ranges from nuts and bolts, to raw materials that we can use to machine or own parts. Some of the more important parts, like a floating tube or buoy will need to be bought in as they are too difficult to manufacture without specialist machines.
At this point, we need to consider how far our budget can stretch, and this brought the team to a major crossroad;
Do we spend a large portion of our budget for a large floating structure? or do we scale down the prototype to demonstrate the function of the design with ore money to spend on other features?
Full Scale, Expensive and Fully Functional Product
Smaller Size, Resourceful and Demonstrative Prototype
DESIGN REFINEMENT
As Engineers, you will soon learn that Design is a 'Wicked Problem' so sometimes you can't see a flaw in your design until you run into a problem. But that's ok! Everyone makes mistakes, and in the end it is much easier for us to fix these mistakes before we make our prototype. And this is why it is so important to follow a process and make sure we don't skip any stages or start a new stage before we are ready. So now that we have redrafted our design we need to go back and tweak our 3D model that you seen earlier, but now that we've done it once and worked out the bugs, it will be easier and even better! At this stage we also add in more detail to build upon our original idea. You can see this new and improved 3D model to the left!
DESIGN ANALYSIS
Next the team sat down to figure out if the design we came up with will work once it's built. We use fancy engineering software called "Computational Fluid Dynamics" or CFD for short, to simulate the ocean conditions and understand how the water pushes the device through the water. This help us imagine how the device will move through the water.
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We also use our knowledge of science and physics to think about how buoyancy works, and if the force allowing the whale to float along the surface will be enough to stop it from sinking. We also need to use maths and equations to think about the weights and distances to make the device balanced. If you think of it like a see-saw in the sea, we don't want one side to be too heavy.
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We also want to make sure that nothing breaks! Whether it be from strong waves or heavy objects, we don't want anything to snap! So we use "Finite Element Analysis" to see where parts might start cracking.
FINAL DESIGN
After all of our hard work to design and analyse our prototype, we made some final changes and added some finishing 'whaley' touches. We are so excited to show you all what the final device will look like. So here it is! Say hello to 'Blubber' our Whale of Litter!
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Looking forward, we have already started procuring the parts that we need, and we have created Engineering Drawings that you can see below. These show how the device will work, and allow us to communicate our ideas with lab technicians and show how they can be manufactured. We've had a lot of help from the experienced lab technicians that know how to make anything we think of (or at least how to make it realistic to manufacture!)
Shows the full prototype from different views and highlights some key features
Lists all the parts and shows how they all fit together
Shows the full prototype from different views and highlights some key features
MANUFACTURING
We have submitted components to be manufactured, and have all the components we need to start assembling the prototype.
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We had planned for this to be completed by the end of March, but due to the ongoing pandemic, we have been unable to continue. Whilst we are uncertain of the future of this project, the safety of the team, university staff and everyone involved is our priority now. We are committed and hopeful that we can finish the prototype at a later date, and even though our final academic submission is now complete, we are still in communication with our supervisor and Primary Engineer to make our Whale of Litter a reality.
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