Summary Page for Individual Wiki Report

Author: Ryan Jamison	Team: Solar Car

Problem Statement

The University of Utah Solar Car uses two battery boxes to contain the batteries used to propel the vehicle. The Solar Car currently has two existing battery boxes built by previous teams. For the 2006–2007 University of Utah Solar Car Team, the battery boxes need to be redesigned to be more user friendly, more fully meet American Solar Challenge rules, and of better construction.

Requirements

The battery box requirements are set forth by the American Solar Challenge . The battery boxes must meet the following:

• Fully enclose the batteries.
• Able to be removed from the vehicle.
• Must ventilate the batteries.

Specifications

To meet the requirements of the American Solar Challenge the battery boxes have the following specifications:

• Fully enclose the batteries.
• Able to secure to the vehicle and secure the batteries in the box.
• Box must be ventilated.

Concept Generation

In beginning the design process of the University of Utah Solar Car, the following steps were taken to generate some basic concepts:

• Study the current battery boxes.
• Generate a simple mindmap.
• Draw some simple hand sketches of the battery box concepts.
• Create a couple 2-point perspective sketches of the concepts.

Design Refinement

To narrow down the concepts created from the concept generation step, the following was done:

• Generate a QFD selection matrix to weigh the advantages and disadvantages to each design
• Model the top three designs chosen from the QFD.

Final Selection

In order to determine which of the three initially selected designs are best, the following was done:

• Generate another QFD selection matrix to determine which of the three designs would be best.
• Model the chosen design and make any necessary changes.

Conclusion

The newly designed battery box will be an upgrade from the current battery boxes and will meet all necessary requirements and specifications.

Lessons Learned

The lessons that were learned from this design process are:

• Requirement and Specifications need to be clearly defined before beginning the design process
• Interaction with others is necessary on a large project.

References & Acknowledgements

• All figures were produced by me throughout the various labs performed this semester in ME 4000.
• I would also like to acknowledge Joseph Alston and David Anderson for helping in the source code for these Wiki pages.