Friday, April 24, 2009

process-engineer-emails 16/4/09

16/4/09
Thanks Corrie,
It’s all becoming much clearer!

I have organised for one of our designers to join us tomorrow and once we have reviewed the structure
We can then get our engineer’s comments. We should be able to turn that around fairly quickly.
See you tomorrow.

Regards,
Brendan Morse

20/4/09
Hi Corrie & Tamara,
Thanks for that.
Yes, it was good to hear more about the project and what you are trying to achieve.
The information you’ve sent is perfect for the moment.
We have our engineer here this afternoon and we will see what he can do.
After some discussion here we have some concerns about the structure that may need a left-field solution.
In short, the frame should not be a problem to build and clamp to the caravan. Our main concern is that however that is approached that there will be a very well defined stress region along the bolting line
And that thickness of Perspex is very prone to cracking through there (again, we will review it with the engineer).
For the moment I can see 2 plausible solutions.
1. To double the thickness of the sheet.
2. To create a more box-like structure by using 2 sheets joined with a 50-100mm cavity in-between them.
To include a line of supporting compression springs (sketch attached) as a part of the frame that will for the most part keep the caravan upright but allow movement with wave action or strong wind.
The other minor concern is that the ‘raindrops’ that you will be adding (partly that the gluing technique may not being reliable), but mostly that they will add considerable weight that to the structure which will mean even more risk of breakage. My suggested solution to this would be that you may save a lot of time and effort (and possibly even cost) by having the raindrops done as cut-outs on the sheet. This will not only save you the work, and weight of, the glue, resins and the risk of glue failure, but may go a long way to reducing the surface area and therefore the wind load and risk of cracking.

Please let me know what response to these ideas is,

Thanks
Bredan

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