September 6, 2017: Week 2

Today we began to brainstorm a couple of ideas dealing with connecting the columns together and if they provided enough structural stability of the entire railway system. A problem that we face is that these columns cannot be bolted through or welded on to connect with each other. In order to stack these columns together, our only current option is to create a clamp design to hold them together.


The second image above is a prototype design manufactured by the previous team on the rail system. While small scale makes this look feasible, on a full scale design there will be an extreme load as well as moment acting between these clamps.

A possible solution of this design would be to make the clamp design longer to make the columns more stable. This can be seen by the rough sketch below:


By extending the clamp, this adds more stability to the individual steel columns that are stacked on top of each other. In addition to that, this can also strengthen the whole column itself while also covering the steel.


On the 3D designed part, I noticed a sort of neck area that was made. I am unsure whether or not this was intentional, but this gave me an idea that we could build onto with this specific clamping design. The top right picture is a rough sketch on how the columns would look like if they were stacked next to each other. By using this approach, the giant column would be more visually appealing opposed to square steel columns with giant clamps in between the sections. 


These columns would also open up different approaches towards visual designs such as painting (ex. flat paint, artwork, sponsorship placement, etc.) 

Overall, this type of reinforcement will provide structural integrity on the outside while concealing the bulky steal beams within.




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