1) 0bjective Trees and Material Performance Indices
Primary Objective Justification
Environmental impacts are crucial factors to consider, especially near a densely populated urban area. The carbon footprint from production is important to public health as well as overall city livability. If the negative impacts of pollution through production outweighs the benefits of having a new producer of energy for a city, then the windmill will not be considered a valid solution to the city’s need for energy.
Secondary Objective Justification
To have a large enough energy supply for a large population you need to be able to fund it so having affordable scalable pricing is important. If the design is too expensive, then it will not be able to be produced, making the design unattainable.
Low alloy steel was rated very well in our two MPI’s that had strength as its functional constraint. While it wasn’t the highest-ranking steel overall, we wanted to include some considerations as well as research to help us decide what to use as our steel finalist. The combination of its MPI ranking as well as its placement in our groups considerations made it one of our top choices for steel versus other steel options such as high and low carbon steel. We found that the other steel options were not as weather resistant as low alloy steel, we believe that this is an important characteristic for a wind turbine, this factor was a major part of our decision of low alloy steel. In our decision matrix, low alloy steel was preferred for most of our criterions. One criterion low alloy steel dominated in was “maintenance/repair,” this is an important criterion to meet because having a long-lasting design means that it must be accessible for repair. Wood and bamboo are essentially irreparable making it extremely hard to increase their total lifespans. Finally, low Alloy Steel has the highest score out of top 3 choices in weighted decision matrix. This led us to our final decision.
Each group member performed an analytical calculation for estimated deflection when given different values of thickness. The constraint on the deflection was that it must be in between 8.5mm and 10mm, knowing this we chose to start our Autodesk simulation thickness at 30mm. This is because a thickness of 30mm gave us a calculated deflection close to being within the parameters. We then ran multiple tests while adjusting the thickness by 1mm at a time until we ended up at the closest value of deflection to 10mm that wasn’t equal to 10mm. This ended up being a deflection of 9.66mm at a thickness of 25mm. Since the general constraint was listed as >10mm, we decided that it would be best to get a value as close to 10mm as possible (rather than 8.5mm). Overall, our group’s chosen thickness was 25mm, and it satisfied the given deflection constraint.