Worked on developing testing equipment for my Senior Design Project. There were two parts to the testing. Design component prototyping and purely testing related.
The mechanism we were designing needed to lift a weight of 300 lbs. for the duration of its use. We were entertaining the idea of using a worm gear winch and so we needed to determine if a) the gear mechanism can withstand the required weight plus a factor of safety and b) if the user could rotate the handle efficiently while under load.
I designed a hoist, attached to it a worm winch and a trash can with 500 lbs. of water based on the volume added to it. I was able to confirm our two design questions.
The second part included the railing and frame to which our mechanism would mount and slide on. We also had to develop the simulated cargo. Because of the nature of the cargo, I developed a technique to create the weights out of concrete to match the exact weights and have the correct center of mass. The PVC pipes are intended to provide attachment points for foam core to give the cargo their correct shape and dimensions to test other design requirements.
