Design Description

RMST's Design Philosophy

Our approach is to learn as much about our customer’s needs as possible. We will then formulate a solution to these needs through research, analysis, and prototype implementation.

Design Method Used

The first step in the team's design was the state of the art research. The team performed state of the art research to gain familiarity with the current missile carrier design, other designs that have been tried, and any solutions to our problem that someone else may have already developed. With the help of the state of the art research the team thoroughly understood the real problem at hand and had the ability to bypass any solutions that someone has already attempted. The state of the art saved the team a great deal of time by preventing the team from "reinventing the wheel."  After the state of the art research, the team started the design of a new missile dampening mechanism. To aid in the team's design efforts, the team consulted their faculty advisor, Dr. John Tester.  Dr. Tester has experience with design of machinery and mechanisms. The team also used Adams software to analyze the different mechanisms that the we brainstormed. To determine stresses on our new design the team used Cosmos and I-DEAS software to run finite element analysis testing on the new elements in our design. The results of the computer simulations reassured the team that the elements of our new mechanism would withstand all forces that would act upon them during field use. The results of the computer simulations can be viewed in the teams documents page. Other analyses we performed are fatigue analysis on the new components and on the helical compression spring incorporated in the teams design.