Week 9

This week I began focusing my work on the junction, the real goal of our project this year. Figure 1 below shows the track positioning for a 8m radius turn. This next week is going to be focused on modifying the existing truss structure to fit a curved section of track as well as a modified segment to make sure the junction is structurally sound.
 
Figure 1: Overall position for track components at the junction.

This week we also came upon another issue with one of the files from last year. The models for the support columns (shown in figure 2) for the entire guide have overlapping bodies in them, one of these interferences is highlighted in highlighted in figure 3 below. This was discovered when Evelia attempted to do some load analysis on the structure that the Full Scale Solar team requested, but was unable to be completed because of this. To fix this we are going to modify, or recreate, the model in the next couple days to get the necessary information to the solar team as soon as possible.
 
Figure 2: Support Column with interfering bodies.

 
Figure 3: One of the interfering sections of the column model.


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