Week 1

The first week of the Spartan Superway internship was exciting and interesting. My part of the internship deals with Half-Scaled Wayside. I have never dealt with power or wayside in previous experience, which makes this project challenging and exciting. On the first week, I tried to learn as much as I can about wayside. I also reviewed previous work on how the wayside was done in the past years. There are still equipments and experiment tests that I do not understand. I will need to keep doing research on how the equipment operates, and how the tests are conducted.

I have discovered that the wayside is similar to the wire on a bus that is connected to the wires as shown in Figure 1. The wayside is a way to conduct electricity, so basically it is a long wire that transfers current.

Figure 1. Train using wayside

https://www.google.com/search?q=wayside+electricity&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS730US730&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj_6pv-gKDUAhUE44MKHaZ2BloQ_AUIDCgD&biw=790&bih=750#imgrc=QOqaYNfxTdhBoM:

I was able to ask previous members and Eric to get a better understanding of my part in the wayside. I am in charge of transferring the solar panel energy to charge the capacitors (batteries). The capacitors should generate a 48V DC on the top rail, which will transfer into the motor's controller at 110V AC. There are many steps and understanding in between in order to get this task to work properly. I have a general understanding of how the project should be done by the end of the first week.

I have so far concluded several ways in getting the wayside to work properly.

Step 1: Use a solar panel charge controller to get the energy from solar panel to batteries

Step 2: The batteries will output 3V, which need to somehow be converted to 48V to be connected to the railing

Step 3: Find a way to connect the batteries to the railing

Step 4: Redesign the collector shoes to fit railing better

Step 5: Use a 48V DC to 110V AC inverter to tranfer the collector shoes voltage into the motor's controller

These are the general idea on how to make the wayside work properly.