Week 8: Design Modifications and Presentation 2

During Week 8, we applied changes to the design of the suspension.

In our original design, there was swinging due to linear acceleration and a lack of vibration damping on the vertical axis.

 
Figure 1. Original design

Our suspension design therefore needed to be modified to fit the design requirements. The addition of a linear actuator across the links allows for control of the links and a spring-damper system will damp the vibrations. The linear actuator will move in response to the position of the links and the acceleration of the pod car. The spring stiffness and damping coefficient will need to be calculated in the future to build the spring-damper system.

Figure 2. Prime design concept

FEA was also done on a CAD model of our system. Our results indicate that deflection is not a major problem and the minimum factor of safety is good for our purposes.


Figure 3. FEA on spring-damper support

In Week 9, we will refine our design even further and begin assembling a bill of materials.


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