Phase 5: Build and Test Prep

The team began this phase by re-familiarizing ourselves with the project and our overall goals leading up to the eventual hand-off of the project to our customer in December. To complete this the first step was populating a detailed, day to day, Gantt chart with expectations for each phase of MSD II. Once that was complete the next step was to ensure that all documentation for MSD I was closed. The team felt as though this were the case and moved on to the final stages in developing our test plans for the mechanical and electrical portions of this project. By collecting the items needed to record the data detailed in the original engineering requirements document and organizing them into a proper bench setup this task was also marked off the list. With the status of our long lead items taken care of over the summer and risk assessment updated the last step was to inform the customer of our return and schedule a meeting to conduct the phase five review. That concluded all the action items for this phase.

Mechanical Test Plan

The above image is a graphical representation of the plan to determine the viability of our chosen fuel pump. The test will begin by connecting the pump to one torch and ensuring it fills the tank fully from empty, if successful additional torches will be added to ensure the system can handle the additional load. The exact means of measuring progress for this test have yet to be determined but it is straightforward to see if fluid is flowing up the torch poles.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of the mechanical float valve our plan is to fill an enclosed volume with fluid through the valve, by measuring the height of the waterline we can determine if the mechanical valve is fully blocking flow of liquid after the level exceeds the float's position.

Electrical Test Plan

The above image details the electrical test bench. Starting with item one: The Analog Discovery Module 2 by Diligent. This small piece of hardware has two scope probes, a power supply, and a waveform generator. All of these will be integral in debugging the issues we will have in unifying each subsystem. Item two is a digital multi-meter.  The functions available match most bench top scopes and meters. It is ideal to have this as part of the test area as it will be useful for making quick measurements of each subsystem by means of alligator clamp. Item three is a collection of soldering tools.  As it is well known that most electrical products come in pieces it is certainly a requirement of any test bench to have soldering and de-soldering tools. Item four is a simple kit of miscellaneous parts and tools.  As often is the case, nothing works perfectly on first attempt. To prepare for this inevitable scenario a collection of passive and active components have been amassed to make the testing process more efficient. Item five is another ease of access tool.  This stand is useful for a plethora of reasons. The main two are safety when soldering and isolation from static charge that could damage sensitive electrical components. This setup will fully cover each of our electrical testing requirements detailed in our Engineering Requirements.

Additional Content

The team has acquired two additional resources to aid in developing the system. The first being a larger storage locker.  This was and ideal situation as the number of components we have amassed began to be too large for the smaller locker. The other is a tool chest available to the team while in the design center. These tools will certainly aid in the completion of our overall goals.

Risk Assessment

For phase 5, the team has re-evaluated the risk assessment chart and made some changes. The team has decided to remove two risk items and add two new risk items. The two that we removed was "Keep sensors away from oil" and "Sensor PCB can't withstand oil erosion". This was decided because with the current delay on getting approval from EHS we may not be allowed to use oil and if that occurs then we won't need those risk assessments as it won't affect us. Instead we have added two new risk assessments and they are: ID 19 and 20. ID 19 says "Static damage parts" and ID 20 says "Getting EHS approval". The reasoning for adding these 2 new risks was the idea of thinking that the team member or an accident occurs and electro static discharge is released and breaks the microcontroller. This could cause a delay to the team and if the replacements are broken then we would need to order new parts. The other risk assessment was for getting EHS approval because that is a blocker currently for us and this blocker will not allow the team to use citronella oil which was a requirement for this project. The team has also decided to decrease the the importance value for one of the risks which was for ID 18. Since we are all back from summer break, we were able to confirm that all the long lead item parts that we were worried about have all arrived. This led the team to think that we will not be worried about the delay in parts for this phase.

The changes to the risk assessment led the total importance value to be lowered by 20 from the previous phase. A chart with the importance vs the number of risks is shown at the bottom. It shows how the importance and the number of risks changed over each phase.

• Pre-read: P21389_BATP_Preread.pdf
• Presentation: Phase V_ Review.pptx

At the end of Phase 6 we want to have performed initial testing with a functional prototype and have analyzed the test results to refine the design during Phase 7. This involves assembling the components ordered at the end of MSD 1 as well as potentially producing new components as required. Additionally we would like to have a rough outline for the final paper, poster, and video to be filled in as subject matter becomes available. Individual team member plans are posted below.