Progress Report, Week 8: November 1st

Last Week, We:

01. Created a proposal for the Arduino

02. Discussed disadvantages to our three alternatives

Tasks Accomplished This Week:

01. Began developing our Arduino proposal, which has been simplified. We are now measuring the force of the vibrations in a regular cuff to determine the minimum sensitivity required of all our designs. 

02. We began specifying quantitative values for all our alternatives:

•   (Optical Fibers)
  • Intensity change due to microbending [feasibility] (we need to be able to see it with our own eyes)
  • Critical Angle? (Can we use sunlight? Glow sticks? Fire? Tritium?)
  • Core material/Clad material (this determines the minimum angle)
  • Multimode, Singlemode, Plastic Optical Fiber (POF)?

•   (Elastic Ring)
  • Young's modulus [deformation] (We need a highly elastic material)
  • Yield strength [deformation] (Maximum load should be less than the maximum pressure the cuff endures to prevent permanent deformation)
  • Attachment (We need a method of attaching the elastic material to the tubing that will not permit air to leak. The seal must be highly reliable)

•   (Particle Indicator)
  • Bead material (weight, size, source) We ideally do not want something that bounces by itself
  • Tension in the (both) membranes (We don't want too many secondary waves)
  • Deformation in (both) membranes (It should be large enough to launch the particle)
  • Material of the membranes

03. We put in the alternatives into the QFD

04. We began and are finalizing our PowerPoint for next week’s presentation on Monday.

Planned Activities for the Following Week:

01. Finish researching specific values and determine the best overall alternative to focus on.

02. Begin researching products from companies to find real materials that fit our specifications for each alternative and to eventually purchase them for testing.

03. Begin understanding programming in LABVIEW for implementation of the force sensor so that there can be a real-time plotting of the force values when the sensor is underneath the cuff.