Design and Analysis of a Strain Transducer Protective Cover in Railway Applications
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Date
2014-12-01
Authors
Chan, Wesley
Cooke, Riley
Pham, Steven
Swanson, Luke
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Abstract
Iders Incorporated tasked the members of Team 10 to design a protective cover prototype for a strain transducer attached to a railway. The cover needs to protect the strain gauge from environmental and mechanical hazards. Through the Fall 2014 term, the team went through a full project design process, starting with laying out the project definition, objectives, target specification and scope. Main objectives include protecting the strain transducer from high impact forces, isolating it from environmental hazards, achieving a total prototype cost of $300.00 per cover and having a product life of 2 years.
Once the scope of the design was fully understood, the team went into a concept generation phase, creating designs that conformed to the project needs. These designs were ranked and discussed with the client to produce a cover assembly that met as many objectives as possible.
The final product is a two-part design. The first part of the design is a long lasting, non- corrosive, GPO-3 base that has a flat continuous perimeter that can easily be attached to both the railway configuration and the cover. The second part of the design is a 316 stainless steel cover, bent and welded from 12-gauge sheet metal. The two components are attached together using 1?4” shoulder screws. Brass inserts are embedded within the plastic base so the cover attaches to the base and are kept tight while not being affected from harsh rail vibrations due to wedge lock and Belleville spring lock washers. The base weights 6.902 kg, has a volume of 383.45 cm3, has a maximum von Mises stress of 16.5 MPa, as determined through Finite Element Analysis (FEA), and is designed to a safety factor of 2.4. The cover weighs 0.819 kg, has a volume of 140.68.cm3, has a maximum von Mises stress of 142.3 MPa as determined through FEA, and is designed to a safety factor of 1.19.
The prototype costs $264.51 for each of the 100 units. The base is CNC milled and the cover is welded together. The high volume design costs are unknown, but a larger capital investment to use a […]