Design Project - AguaClara/SWOT GitHub Wiki

Design Project

No draft submissions are required for any phase of the design project.

Goals of the challenge:

  1. Create some new ideas
  2. Use your engineering skills to analyze a problem and create a solution
  3. Expand the solution space for next-generation water treatment technologies
  4. Make the planet a better place

Ideas

Design Archive from previous years

What makes a great design project

Here is an example of a great design project. The characteristics of an outstanding project include:

  1. You demonstrate mastery of concepts that you've learned in this course (and of course, prior knowledge!)
  2. You use physics and economic constraints to select optimal design parameters
  3. You take the analysis BEYOND the analysis that you did in design challenges
  4. You play with several key constraints (vary them over a wide range) to understand which constraints dominate a design
  5. You invent a design that extends beyond our current best technologies

Project selection

Send email with paragraph (in the body of the email) description of what your team wants to do Receive approval for any ideas not included in Ideas well before Preliminary Design is due.

Preliminary Design

This assignment and subsequent phases of the design project are to be created in a Colab notebook. Make sure that your Colab notebook begins with a project title, the names of the contributors, and an introduction to the problem that you are solving.

  • Create a title for your project.
  • Write an introduction/background to your project and explain why it matters.
  • Go metric.
  • Describe your general plan for solving the problem. Create as much detail about how the steps you will need to take to solve the problem as you can. Taking the time to think about the detailed steps will help you divide up tasks and work efficiently.
  • Include list of important constraints, trade offs, perceived operator/user specifications, major design alternatives, and comparison of the major design alternatives according to the various constraints that you have identified.
  • Create a table comparing alternatives and your evaluation of which alternatives are most viable. See the comparison of net velocities and filtration performance of SRSF, RSF, and multistage filters.
  • The Colab notebook should include a method to determine any major design constraints, proposed solution technique(s), analysis, sketches, preliminary design, with extensive documentation. Any equations that you present must be well documented with explanation of how you derived those equations and how you are using those equations.
  • Explain ALL calculations step by step including why you are doing the calculation.
  • Include a bibliography and citations to acknowledge use of work by others.
  • Look ahead to the report requirements and begin working on including those sections.
  • Spell check before submitting and proofread the entire report.

Draft report

Set up a meeting with Monroe to discuss any questions you have as you are preparing this draft report.

Use the same Colab notebook that was returned to you from the previous assignment so that we can see you how you responded to comments. You are expected to revise sections of the previous submission based on feedback and new information. Format the report just like you would any other report with text, equations, and figures in one continuous, easy to read document.

  • Colab notebook must be organized as a stand alone report that can be read and easily understood from beginning to end.
  • Write in paragraph format so that your work is easy to understand. The report must be organized with text used to introduce and explain equations, images, and design methods.
  • Explain the physics of the problem, the constraints, and how they influence your solution scheme.
  • Document your sources of information with in text citations and a bibliography.
  • Present each equation using beautiful Latex and then follow that with the code cell with the function written in Python.
  • Clearly explain which equations you developed and which equations you borrowed from the AguaClara source code.
  • Explain ALL code calculations step by step including why you are doing the calculation.
  • If you need to display results in a table, use a DataFrame to make a nicely formatted result that changes with input parameters.
  • Include sketches (consider linking to Onshape) that show the geometry of your system and make sure that all variables are clearly defined.
  • Spell check before submitting and proofread the entire report.

Final Report

Use the same Colab notebook that was returned to you from the previous assignment. You are expected to revise sections of the previous submission based on feedback and new information. Make sure it begins with a title and an introduction! Format the report just like you would any other report with text, equations, and figures in one continuous, easy to read document.

  • The report should include an introduction, a theoretical basis for your design work, the assumptions you made with their justification, results, drawings that illustrate your design, conclusions, and suggestions for further work.
  • The final report is to be in a very organized and well formatted Colab notebook.
  • Insert drawings into the Colab notebook. Graphs and drawings must be labeled with numbered Figure captions.
  • Explain ALL calculations step by step including why you are doing the calculation.
  • Include drawings and pictures that serve as definition sketches for your calculations. You can easily create computer art in Paint (good for artists and a terrible choice for engineers), PowerPoint (quick, reasonably flexible, and can be scaled correctly), in Onshape (professional), or your drawing tool of choice.
  • Remove ALL of Monroe's comments so that your report is ready to be shared with others. Of course, your job is to address as many of Monroe's comments as you can to make your report stronger.

Need to update method of submitting the assignment

Zip the notebook and and referenced files (images, sketches, data) so that we have all the necessary files to view your complete report. Test this on your computer first to make sure that you've included all the necessary support files! I know the US is one of the few holdouts for the use of English units. But if you want to be global engineers you have to make the switch to metric. You can include English units in parenthesis. Use headings to create sections in your report. Use subheadings to describe different subsections. Provide hyperlinks to any materials that you are evaluating. (Yes, Colab notebooks support hyperlinks). Provide in text citations (with hyperlinks when possible) and a reference section to any resources or work by others that you use. Every parameter that you use needs to be defined. You don't need to provide definitions for parameters that you are borrowing directly from aguaclara repository. All parameters that you create must be defined using a text description, a definition sketch, or both. Spell check before submitting and proofread the entire report.

Final Project Presentation (PowerPoint)

Each team will present the results of their design project. The presentation should take 10 minutes and should utilize electronic classroom capabilities. Because time is short it is imperative that all presentations be emailed to Monroe at least 1 hour before the beginning of the presentation time. All members of each team should contribute to the oral presentation.

  • Tell the story of what you designed/created/invented for your capstone project. Consider including paths that you explored and then abandoned and explain how you decided to abandon those paths. If possible use pictures to explain how your understanding of the problem evolved. Highlight what you learned! Highlight any recommendations you have for the AguaClara program.
  • Make sure that there aren't ANY slides with just text
  • Don't include an outline slide. Outline slides tend to be boring and useless.
  • A description of your project goal and a brief context of why your project is important
  • A description of your design steps showing major equations or constraints and how they were used to obtain a design
  • A description of your analysis methods and key constraints
  • Significant findings from your design development
  • A description of the applications you envision for your product
  • Sketches and/or Onshape drawings of your system showing important dimensions and components
  • Describe what you learned from your project and indicate what you recommend for further development.
  • Submit your PowerPoint presentation and all support files so they can be downloaded to the presentation computer and published at the class web site at least one hour prior to the presentations.