Systems Design

Table of Contents

1 Team Vision for System-Level Design Phase
2 Functional Decomposition
3 Benchmarking
4 Research
5 Feasibility
6 Morphological Chart
7 Concept Selection
8 Systems Architecture
9 Design
10 Risk Assessment
11 Plans for next phase
- 11.1 '''Individual Plans'''

Team Vision for System-Level Design Phase

Team's plan for this phase:

Breakdown the process of acquiring data and determine the inputs and outputs of the system.
Develop a list of possible solutions for acquiring and manipulating the data.
Perform analysis on the possible solutions to prove functionality.

Team's accomplishments for this phase:

Created a functional decomposition diagram to show the inputs and outputs of the system.
Created a morphological table to determine possible solutions for acquiring and storing the data.
Created a concept selection table to analyze the different possible solutions to determine the best solution.
Created the system architecture and determined how the nodes and main node will interface.
Researched and spoke with experts about battery, connectors, materials for enclosure, IP standards, filtering, and sensors.
Created a preliminary schematic of the system.
Created a plan for phase 3

Functional Decomposition

Benchmarking

The live Benchmarking document can be found here.

Research

For this phase, a lot of research was done on each component of the system. Research was done by talking to experts and reading information of websites and articles. The research was split into categories and can be seen in the table below.

Topic	Research
Strain Gauges	Research
Hall Effects	Research
Thermocouples	Research
Microcontrollers	Research
Batteries	Research
Noise	Research
Cables	Research
IP Standards	Research
Enclosure Material	Research

Feasibility

Analysis

Calculations were performed to determine the total cost, max current draw from each sensor, the total weight, memory usage and the size to ensure all engineering requirements are being met.

Total Cost and Max Current

Total Weight and Size

Total Memory

Testing

Lab testing was performed with strain gauges to get an understanding of the behavior of the strain gauges. Strain versus force was recorded and plotted as seen below.

Test 1

Test 2

Future Testing Plans

Get sample connectors and submerge into water to ensure IP standards will be met
Get sample enclosure and submerge into water to ensure IP standards will be met
Perform lab testing with hall effect sensors to capture the noise from the sensor to determine the best hardware filter to eliminate noise
Perform lab testing with thermocouple sensor to capture the noise from the sensor to determine the best hardware filter to eliminate noise.

Morphological Chart

The live Morphological Chart can be found here.

Concept Selection

Possible Solutions

After the possible solutions were determined, they were compared against each other using selection criteria determined from the customer requirements. The results of concept selection are shown below. The five iterations of the concept screening can be see in the live document.

Concept Selection

Although option D ranked number 1, the solution for the battery is not practical. After more analysis and research, the best solution will be determined.

The live Concept Selection document can be found here.