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Ballistic Loading and Structural Testing Lab

Course Projects

300 mph Hail

Teams were tasked with designing, analyzing and testing a structure structure that could withstand the impact of hail at 300 mph.

Project Description:

Design a structure that can withstand the impact of the hail using the different types of structures that we have talked about in this class. You need to design a structure with ribs and stiffeners which is similar to what we see for aircraft structures.
Design Requirements

  • No part of the structure can be thicker than 1/8” thick
  • You can not run a stiffener in the middle of the panel
  • There must be an open section that is 4” x 4”
  • You can use any material
  • Remember cost is an evaluation matrix
  • You must construct it on your own

Examples:

Almost Supersonic Golf Ball

Teams were tasked with designing, analyzing and testing a composite structure that could withstand the impact of a golf ball impact the structure at 700 ft/sec.

Project Description: The world’s “best” golfer has developed a new swing that allows them to hit a golf ball at almost supersonic speeds. Their concern over the media attention has prompted them to build a wall which can withstand the impact of their golf balls while preventing reports from witnessing their swing. Your goal is to design a composite structure that can withstand the impact of a golf ball. A standard golf ball will be fired at around 700 ft/sec into your structure and we will take high speed video to see what happens. Your design will be compared for how well it stops the projectile compared to the weight of the component and the estimated cost. The wall can be no thicker than 20mm.

The panel can only be made of materials discussed in this class. This includes composites, honeycombs, Foams, etc. No Metals, Woods, Ceramic or Shear Thickening Fluid can be used.

Report on Outcomes:Pankow ASEE 2019

Deliverables

The report must be clear, as you need to show your understanding of the answer. This means including appropriate figures and graphs to support the text in a maximum of 10 pages. The final report will consist of the following descriptions

  • Problem Description (5%)State the problem/goal of the project in your own words.
  • Expected Outcomes (5%)What do you expect to learn? How will your analysis be performed?
  • Design of Panel (40%) Supporting design and analysis to support your chosen configuration
  • Fabrication of Panel (10%) Fabrication of an 8”x8” panel of your specimen.
  • Estimation of Cost (10%) Cost for panel and estimates for scaling up.
  • Experimental Testing (20%) Results for the experimental test
  • Conclusions (10%)Clearly discuss your results, any conclusions and what you might change about the design. How did your designs compare to other groups.

Examples:

Supersonic Ping Pong Ball

Teams were tasked with developing a structure that could withstand the impact of a pingpong ball fired at supersonic speeds out of a vacuum cannon.

Project Call:
You are going to Mars and to avoid boredom you would like to have something to occupy your time. Someone has decided it would be a great idea to play ping-pong in space. With a vacuum there will be no resistance for the ping-pong ball and therefore the ball will be able to travel faster than the speed of sound. Your goal is to design a composite structure that can withstand the impact of a supersonic Ping-Pong ball. A standard Ping-Pong ball will be fired at around mach 1.1 into your structure and we will take high speed video to see what happens. Your design will be compared for how well it stops the projectile compared to the weight of the component and the estimated cost. The Ping pong blade can be no thicker than 10mm.

The panel can only be made of materials discussed in this class. This includes composites, honeycombs, Foams, etc. No Metals, Woods or Ceramic, Shear Thickening Fluid can be used.

Report on Outcomes:Pankow ASEE 2019

Deliverables
The report must be clear, as you need to show your understanding of the answer. This means including appropriate figures and graphs to support the text in a maximum of 10 pages. The final report will consist of the following descriptions

  • Problem Description (5%) State the problem/goal of the project in your own words.
  • Expected Outcomes (5%) What do you expect to learn? How will your analysis be performed?
  • Design of Panel (40%) Supporting design and analysis to support your chosen configuration
  • Fabrication of Panel (10%) Fabrication of an 8”x8” panel of your specimen.
  • Estimation of Cost (10%) Cost for panel and estimates for scaling up.
  • Experimental Testing (20%) Results for the experimental test
  • Conclusions(10%) Clearly discuss your results, any conclusions and what you might change about the design. How did your designs compare to other groups.

Examples:

Student Analysis:

Straw Structure to Support Professor

Objective:As engineers we are often faced with difficult challenges. Often we are given requirements that you must design an object that can support an elephant, but can weigh nothing. Apollo 13 engineers were faced with this problem as they had to adapt their square filters to a round hole.

Your challenge is to design a structure that the support a weight of 200lbs. However, you can only use straws, popsicle sticks, and clear masking tape to hold your structure together.

Requirements:Your structure must be 2 ft. tall, but can only have a base of 1ftx1ft. The structure must support at least 200 lbs. We will set a piece of plywood on the top to avoid point loading. The structure will be loaded with all 200 lbs. at once.  Prof. Pankow will stand on top  of your structure.

Preliminary Report (20%)Preliminary testing and design

Final Report (30%):Final results and discussion

Structure carrying 200 lbs (30%) In class testing

Weight of the structure (20%)This will be based on the other groups.

Preliminary Report:

You are going to be limited to 3 pages for your report, so you need to be concise with the description of your design. This means including appropriate figures and graphs to support the text. The report should contain the following items.

  • Problem Description State the problem/goal of the project in your own words (do not just copy what I wrote)
  • Proposed DesignWhat your structure will look like and how it will work.
  • Preliminary testing What kind of material testing did you perform, did you look at different joints and compare them.
  • Design Iterations Show the different designs you considered and how you arrived at your final design, what considerations did you make and what were the considerations that you examined.
  • Relevant Calculations Show any calculations you did to arrive at your final design, you should be able to justify what you are doing.

Final Report:

You are going to be limited to 4 pages for your report, so you need to be concise with the description of your design. This means including appropriate figures and graphs to support the text. The report should contain the following items.

  • Problem Description State the problem/goal of the project in your own words (do not just copy what I wrote)
  • Final DesignWhat your final structure looked like.
  • Final Testing How your structure performed. How it compared to other groups
  • Future Designs What would you change about your design. Is there further optimization you could have done? Did your design have a fatal flaw that you would change? Is there another structure that would work better (you can’t just say the winning design). What were the lessons learned?
  • Relevant Calculations Show any calculations you did to arrive at your final design, you should be able to justify what you are doing.

Composite: Design, Build, Test

This project is designed to explore your creativity and push your technical capabilities with fabrication and analysis. Your team must design, fabricate, and test a product of your choosing. Examples include a skateboard, surfboard, or bike frame, kayak. These are ideas to get you thinking about your product. Your team will get to keep their project at the end of the class, therefore pick something that you want to keep and use.

Examples:

Skateboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2aS1G6yp-4

Surfboard: https://www.thoughtco.com/profile-of-the-composite-surfboard-820423

Bike Frame: https://newatlas.com/juliet-designs-wood-carbon-bike/53452/

Materials:

You will have access to the common materials. Fiberglass, resin, etc. Other materials can be used; however, they will be at your expense since you will get to keep the project when you are done.

Deliverables

The report must be clear, as you need to show your understanding of the answer. This means including appropriate figures and graphs to support the text in a maximum of 10 pages. The final report will consist of the following descriptions

  • Problem Description (5%)State the problem/goal of the project.
  • Develop your Requirements (5%) Describe the requirements for the product you are developing.
  • Design Process (20%)Describe how you got to the final design. Describe how you progressed through the design process. What initial concepts were generated, how did you select your final concept, and what changes were needed to reach the final design?
  • Analysis (30%) Analysis to support your final design along with how you optimized the structure.
  • Fabrication of Project (10%) Fabrication of your design.
  • Testing/Demo (10%) Testing to show that it meets your requirements.
  • Conclusions (10%)Clearly discuss your results and discuss what you might change about the design. What were the issues and what would change in the next iteration of design?
  • YouTube Video (10%) Produce a 2 minute YouTube video which highlights your project. You must show the capabilities, talk about what you did, how it is better than traditional materials and anything unique you did.

Examples: