WINDSHIELD WIPER OPTIMIZATION DESIGN PROJECT

First semester of my third year of Mechanical Engineering, I participated in a design team with the goal of optimizing windshield wipers on the new Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) streetcars (Academic Project). The client informed us that the current one-wiper system is not capable of clearing the large amounts of snow that build up in the winter and is incapable of reaching most of the windshield area, due to dimension and linkage limitations. We were tasked with designing a wiper system that consisted of more linkages with smaller swipes capable of maximum clearance. 

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This project focuses heavily on different analysis techniques that can be used when analyzing a mechanism, taken from the Kinematics and Dynamics of Machines course I had taken. The analysis used included position, force and dynamic force analysis. Our proposed design consists of two wipers (one single wiper and one L-shaped wiper) on the front windshield and one on either side windshield. The design runs on one motor located on the front windshield plane, connected to a crank rocker with the output being a long bar translating from left to right (where the front wipers are attached). In order to convert the translational motion from the front plane to the side windshield planes, my team and I used hydraulics, where the translating bar under either windshield is attached to a piston and a 90-degree elbow pipe.

Position analysis was used to find the optimal location of the coupler on the L- Wiper to obtain maximum clearance. This was done through MATLAB, where we created a script that computes the path of the coupler at different lengths and at different locations on the mounted wiper part. We have found the optimal location to be at the end and of the same length as the mounted wiper. Force analysis was used to determine the required cross-sectional area of either side of the hydraulic pipe to obtain the distance required for the side wipers to travel. I was responsible for the 3D CADing on Solidworks as well as the force analysis done to determine what torque was required by the motor. It concluded with a 10 page report written with the intended audience of non-technical readers, and therefore challenged me to be more concise and visual in my explanations.