Week #3

This week, the Full Scale Team once again met up with Ron before he left for his trip to Europe in a couple of hours. The meeting consisted of news from his contact from South Africa. We were able to see pdf's of CAD drawings from the company, Milotek. With these pdf's the team was able to come up with some ideas as to how we should try to create our own Superway. A big thing that the Milotek company had which our team never really thought about, was the design for the footing, support posts and beams for the Superway.

After our meeting with Ron, the team had many discussions about the design of the support beams, footings and posts. Which brought us to a various number of questions:
1. How would we want to design the beam?
2. Would we need precautions around these posts in populated areas?
3. What types of protections to the posts and surrounding unknowns are needed?
4. Do we want these posts to essentially "break-away"?
Many questions came about, but we haven't come up with a single answer yet.

By the end of this week, we decided to have each member of the team create their own prototype of the support posts through the ideas given to us in class and brief research about the topic.

Week #2

This week, we met up with Ron to discuss what we're trying to construct for the full scale track team. We went over a lot of ideas about how we're going to construct a 24 meter long track. Instead of going the whole 24 meters, which is the ideal design from column to column, our team is only going to work on a 10 foot section of the track and try to come up with tests to understand different elements. These elements consists of vibrations, strength, materials, sturdiness, rigidity, etc., for designing parameters in preparation of an actual 24 meter long track. Ron also talked to us about the Futran - Milotek company from South Africa and how they're constructing their own Solar powered automated tram. We were able to finally visualize and comprehend what we're trying to achieve with this Spartan Superway. With these notes and a good talk with Ron about what we're trying to do, we decided to look at already existing models and ideas from the past and gathered our own thoughts together for what is to come next. For the remainder of the class we just made brief sketches and organized our ideas as a team.

Rough sketches below:

Success and Fails from the Past, Full Scale Team

Kevin Maligaya

Fall 2016/Spring 2017

Full Scale Track Team

After viewing the progress from the August 10, 2016 Civil Environmental Engineering Team, I was able to really understand and flesh out what they were trying to do with their aspect on the Spartan Superway. There are all kinds of information that's useful for people trying to pickup where they left off, like my team. Their main purpose as a team was to try and figure out the best way to get from the main SJSU campus, to the South SJSU campus. Their main problem was the already existing infrastructure - freeways. Interstate-280 is right in the middle of these two destinations. This is a huge problem because we don't want to spend so much money trying to extend the Spartan Superway up-and-above the already existing freeway. This team's goal was to specifically tackle this challenge, which was all documented in the pdf that they've left behind. Although there are many useful information, some adjustments could be made to help someone new to start off smoothly from where the summer civil engineering team has left off.

There are many inconsistent 2-D CAD drawings throughout this pdf. Although they're there to help illustrate what they're envisioning, it sometimes becomes unbearable to look at because of its inconsistency and flat 2-D figures. These inconsistencies include having CAD files with either white backgrounds or black backgrounds - having this fixed to either white or black instead of both would have made the presentation of their ideas much smoother to focus on. One can easily tell that the CAD files with black backgrounds have more experienced engineers than the plain CAD files with white backgrounds. Also, with CAD files, the different colors and lines comes out better when the background is darker, like black. Also, some of the CAD pictures include title blocks, while the others do not. This is a small thing, however it is apparent to viewers like myself and is portrays a very inconsistent flow throughout the pdf. Also, since, most of the figures are in 2-D, perhaps dedicating some time to create a 3-D version of their vision would help the viewers really see what they're trying to do - like an overall plan, with the Spartan Superway. Also, refining more of their plans into much more concrete evidence and documentation would really help propel the Spartan Superway and its progress. This is where my team should be able to pick up where they left off and continue working on this problem and much much more.