Sustainable Mobility System for Silicon Valley Project

This week we finished up on assembling the vertical and horizontal columns. We are pretty much finished with our structure, and will just need to install the track as well as horizontal bracings to prevent the majority of the flexing. The next steps we will have to complete this weekend are to finish mounting our tracks onto the supports, as well as finding a way to secure these horizontal supports onto our vertical columns. After that we will just need to install additional 2x4 pieces of wood onto our horizontal beam. This is due to our length of the structure just being a couple inches shorter than the solar canopy. To accommodate for this we will need to extend it so that their supports will line up with our horizontal column and mount onto it.

Today we finished up on working on our tracks. We attached our vertical columns made up of 3 2x4s to the track. The use of 3 2x4s helps with the strength of the structure as well as its ability to resist a bending moment. The smaller block attached perpendicular to this column was used in order to help the column easily align with the track, as well as provide additional load bearing strength. Instead of creating a moment when the column is directly applied to the track, weight will be transferred onto these blocks providing additional support. These are the finished track beams which will be later inserted into the horizontal columns of our main structure's supports.