Senior Project
Background
In more recent years, camper vans have become increasingly popular among daily drivers and campers, however, setting them up can be difficult in certain conditions. Our team was tasked to design and prototype an automated pop-up 4-person camper that can be integrated into the roof of a consumer van. This page briefly discusses the final prototype as well as brief insight into the design process we followed to get us to the final phase of our product leading up to Senior Project Expo. My main role was to create a complete system that was used to operate the opening and closing of the panels as well as provide design support for the other important aspects of our design.
Design Process
Design Brainstorm
Once our team received our design project, we went into design ideation and drew sketches of possible designs for the product. After creating several sketches for potential ideas, we used a design decision matrix to figure out which design or what aspects of each one was more desirable and scored the highest.
Concept 1
Concept 2
Concept 3
Concept Prototype
Once we decided on a general idea for a desgin, we then made a concept prototype printing out a rough model of a van with panel roofs meant to simulate the opening mechanism of our chosen design. Balloons were used to represent the inflatable tubes that would serve as the exoskeleton of the tent frame, and an arduino was used to control the servos that operated the panels.
Closed configuration
Open configuration
Structural Prototype
For the structural prototype, our team forced on building a singular panel and used basic Finite Element Analysis to determine the location most likely to experience failure on the panels when supporting an individual. After completing analysis, a structural prototype of one of the panels was built to provide a better understanding of the overall design and verify that our simulations were accurate. From the structural prototype we learned what spots of our design needed better support and were able to integrate into our actual product.
Manufacturing
Once the structural prototype was done and simulations were completed for other components of our project, we began manufacturing the verification prototype.
Mill was used to cut out the slots in the aluminum to make room to slide the aluminum bars through for the structural support of the product.
Each alumnim rod or bar was welded to each other, to maximize support and strenght.
Completed frame of product.
Custom designed adapter to connect bearing with load bearing carriage of the motor assembly.
Fully machined adapter.
Completed Motor assembly; including rail, carriage, adapter, bearing, clevis, and motor arm.
ME404_FinalReport.docx.pdfFinal structural analysis using Abaqus to determine expected loads before running physical test.
Testing
Once the verification prototype was completely built, several tests were done to validate our team's engineering specifications. Here are a few:
Confirmed the force being exerted at the bearing when lifting the panel. Verified motor selection.
Confirmed that the deflection at the end of the panels caused by 250lb load was less than a quarter of an inch.
Confirmed that four people could sleep in the product without feeling cramped or touching shoulder to shoulder.
Final Product
After three quarters worth of work, our team successfully designed and create a verification prototype. We currently have a provisional patent for our desing and moving forward, the next steps would be to take our product and approach car manufacturers in hopes of them being able to offer this product as an additonal package for people interested in a fully integrated camper van.
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