<aside> 🧱 As this was the last milestone, we were required to finalize the geometric requirements for the turbine blade, specifically the sheet thickness that will satisfy the design constraint (i.e., the blade’s maximum deflection must be less than 10 mm). In this design studio I learned how to properly use the deflection simulation and how to use this to estimate the required thickness for a given scenario. This milestone was also divided into three parts.

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Stage 1: Airfoil thickness

In this stage, each team member was assigned a certain thickness and required to run the simulation to determine the amount of deflection associated with their assigned thickness. My assigned thickness was 150mm, and this produced an estimated deflection of 4.169mm

deflection simulation for 150mm thickness.

Stage 2: Refined thickness

For the next part as a team, we were asked to choose a suitable thickness that would be satisfy the deflection constraint. This was done by continuing to alter the thickness of the blade up until the design constraint was met. At the end we found that if a thickness of 26.5mm is used a deflection of 9.116mm is obtained, which is less than 10mm, therefore satisfying the design constraint.

Deflection simulation for the refined thickness

Stage 3: Peer interview

After the wrapping up our case scenario, we were asked to interview another team and document on what they learned from this project. Through this interview I was able to delve into another group’s mindset and understand how other objectives came into play when delt with a different kind of scenario.

• Peer interview notes