Engineering 100-950

Lab 6: Structures

Contents

• Lab 6: Structures
  • Contents
  • Materials
  • Mass Measurement
  • Temperature
  • Accelerometer
  • Submission

Materials

• 3 different types of insulation
• Finished Breadboard
• Battery Pack
• 1 Box
• Digital Scale (for mass measurements)

Mass Measurement

Before conducting your temperature and accelerometer trials, you will measure and record the total mass of your payload for each insulation material. This is crucial for understanding how mass impacts design choices in payload construction.

Complete the following steps for each of the three insulation materials:

• Fully insulate your payload (box with breadboard, battery, and insulation).
• Place the fully assembled payload (including insulation) on the digital scale and record the mass in grams.
• Repeat this process for each of the three insulation types.

After completing all trials, you will use these mass values in your post-lab analysis to create a mass trade diagram. This will help you evaluate how insulation effectiveness and impact protection correlate with overall payload mass.

Temperature

For the temperature trials, we will use the cold chamber to simulate the temperatures that your PCB will endure in the upper atmosphere. You will use three different materials as insulation for your preliminary structures. When you have sufficiently insulated your breadboard, you will attach your battery and place it into the cold chamber. Make sure that you are writing data to the SD as fast as possible; you will take data for about 4 minutes and plot each trial on the same graph.

Using 3 different insulations at your disposal (possibilities include hard foam, cotton balls, fluff, etc.), complete the following steps three times, once for each material.

• Insulate your box, ensuring the insulation covers all sides of the breadboard.
• Attach the battery to your breadboard and, using your previously written programs, record TMP36 data on your SD for 4 minutes.
• Plot the data and make sure the TMP36 reaches a constant temperature. If it doesn’t, repeat the trial for a longer period of time.

Accelerometer

For the accelerometer trials, you will be carefully dropping your payload from chest height. This will (somewhat) simulate the turbulence that your PCB will encounter throughout its flight. You will again complete 3 trials, once each for your different materials as padding. Make sure that your breadboard has sufficient padding on all sides and that you are dropping it in a way that the wires are facing up when it hits the ground. Ensure you are writing data to the SD as fast as possible, and you will be recording data for the duration of the drop.

Repeat these steps once for each material:

• Add the padding to your box, ensuring you have coverage on all sides of the breadboard.
• Attach your battery to the breadboard and, using your previously written programs, record accelerometer data on your SD card for the duration of the drop.
• Plot the data on separate graphs, and add the plots into your post-lab questions doc at the end.

Submission

On Canvas, you will submit ONE PDF that will include all of the following:

• Using your gathered data, what would you use to insulate/protect your payload (a combination of materials is allowed if their combination is functional and realistic)? Explain why!
• All three TMP36 trials for the three insulations plotted on 1 plot. Include labels for each axis, and label the three lines as each trial respectively. Make sure to include which trial is for which insulation in the caption/legend.
• 3 accelerometer plots, one for each trial. Make sure to include appropriate labels for each plot.
• A plot showing the impact on mass by each insulating material.

To put said content into a PDF, it is suggested you create a new Google Doc (docs.new) and paste your images and write any text in the document. Export/Download this document as a PDF and upload it. DO NOT SUBMIT A GOOGLE DOC FILE OR SPREADSHEET FILES.