Final Conclusions

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· We delivered manufacturing drawings to SEL that will aid them in the production of the IT2000.

----This drawing is part of a set of drawings that Sedona Energy Labs can send out to have the IT2000 manufactured on a larger scale than is possible in Flagstaff. All of the drawings that were done by our capstone team were fully defined using SolidWorks CAD package.

· A set of recommendations were written to help Sedona Energy Labs improve the current IT2000

Test Recommendations

This recommendation was carried out by the use of a document known as the Local Installation Procedure. This document is intended to outline a procedure that will test the system under natural dynamic wind loading. This is necessary to satisfy sections 12.10.1 and 12.10.2 of the IEC6xxxx solar tracking compliance document which is one of the only solar tracking system compliance documents. The Local Installation Procedure suggests places to mount the tracker, particular test to run with a bill of materials and estimated budget as well as outcomes that should be achieved by local installing the system.

Design Recommendations

The basis of the design recommendations came from all the research and testing that was done through out the semester. The team learned a wealth of information about the system by disassabling and reassembling it, running virtual and physical test on it, by simply applying hanging loads to the system and observing how it reacted. All of the information collected was used to asses the current design and come up with a set of recommendations that would help Sedona Energy Labs ultimately produce and better product at a lower cost. Some of the recommendations were based on the solutions we recorded from the finite element analysis (FEA) done in Geostar simulation and others were simply based on system observations. We conducted a safety factor analysis based on the stress outputs from the FEA and we found that some of the components could be modified based on their current safety factor.

Finite element analysis illastration of the Von Mises stress seen by a particular part on the IT2000

Finite element analysis illastration of the stress seen by a long member of the IT2000

The above table is a list of final design recommendations that were submitted to Sedona Energy Labs based on our reaserch and testing.

· The IT2000 was statically loaded with the equivalent force of a 90 mph wind, satisfying the IEC6xxxx sections: 5.13.2, 5.13.3

This conclusion was one of the most important objectives of the project. We set out to verify, based on current industry standards, that the IT2000 met the minimum wind loading certifications. Based on the certifications listed in the EIC6xxxx compliance document, the IT2000 is in compliance with today's industry standards. This is important to Sedona Energy Labs because before they produce this system on a large scale they would like to have the confidence that says their system will not fail under regular wind loading.