Weekly Progress Reports (see sidebar), the Gantt chart, and this Project Management page should be printed out before meetings with the sponsor and instructor.
All team members should be able to explain all items on the progress report.
Place a "*" at the beginning of the title of the active week Progress Report (see * in sidebar).
Overview of Project Context
A passive sediment sampler has been developed by SPAWAR to study the chemical concentrations in waterways. However, the lost cost per unit of the equipment is often undermined by the overhead cost of retrieval. The MAE 156A project effort is to help make the system more modular and also design a cost-effect retrieval mechanism that can help scientists find the sampler sites more quickly.
Project Objectives
High Priority Objective-System Retrieval Mechanism
The top objective of this project is to create an effective retrieval system for the existing sediment sampling assembly. This retrieval system will be activated following system deployment in an underwater environment of depths up to a hundred feet for a duration of up to two months.
Second Priority Objective-Standardized Interface System
A secondary objective of the sediment sampler project is to make the system to deploy and retrieve the samplers adaptable to different types of samplers and different methods of deployment.
Other Constraints and Issues
Design constraints include: the salinity of the water, currents up to 1m/s that may impede the float’s ascent to the surface, biofouling of the retrieval mechanism, and corrosion of materials, battery life of 2 months, low height profile, low environmental contamination materials, high pressure environment for housing
WOW Design Solution
A sediment sampler system that is a reusable, low-cost ($100 per unit), and can be deployed and retrieved with ease (able to deploy about 100 units in one day).
Risk Reduction Strategy
Test mechanical release mechanism.
Intermediate Milestones
Week 2: Design finalized
Week 4: Individual components completed
Week 5: Integration of components
Week 6: Testing
Week 7: Re-design and improvement
Week 9-10: Final tests