Platform Project - Senior Design Group

Trinity University students are working with Medair to develop a water bladder platform. These platforms will be used by Medair in their emergency disaster relief efforts in remote areas of Southern Sudan. The water bladders that are supported by these platforms are used to deliver fresh and clean water to isolated communities, which use the water for cleaning, personal hygiene, and drinking. The platform must be at least 1 m tall to provide enough water pressure at the end of the fluid transpo1i system. The top surface of the platform must be at least 4m x Sm in order to hold the entire bladder. The platform must be easy to transport and should not exceed 250kg. It must be a durable design due to the varied and extreme African climate conditions and must be produced for a total cost of less than $3000.The final design will be drafted in Pro-Engineer and tested using Pro-Mechanica in order to ensure the solution can hold the weight of the bladder with a safety factor of four. The final design is modular and comprised of four main components: the platform surface, suppo1i pedestals, legs, and feet. The top surface is a grid design that uses aluminum rods. These rods are connected to a frame made from hollow rectangular aluminum tubes. The pedestal support includes four pegs that will secure one corner from each of the four tops supported at the joint. This pedastal support sits on a square hollow aluminum tube that will serve as the leg and will hold the top at just over one meter. The feet are leveling mounts that will be screwed onto the bottom of each leg. The production of the entire platform is not feasible with the current resources, so four prototype modules will be constructed and tested. After obtaining data from the prototype modules, analysis will be performed to ensure the structural integrity of the full scale model and success in meeting stated constraints.