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The goal of the Automated Materials List is to calculate the volume of concrete needed, areas of components that will be made out of bricks (these areas can be divided by the area of one brick to see how many bricks are needed), lengths and sizes of pipes, number of plastic sheets for the lamella, etc. The final Materials List should act as a rough outline for on-site construction and facilitate the job of the engineers and planners. This program requires inputs from the user and from the design assumptions to compute the necessary calculations. Currently, the List calculates the total materials needed for construction and various dimensions for different components of the plant.
The output of the Design Tool now includes a dedicated Materials List section in the Design Specifications document, listing comprised of important variables from the Entrance Tank, Floc Flocculation Tank, and Sed Sedimentation Tank. Engineers designing plants will now be able see to estimate how much material is needed to construct the different components of the plant, including the walls of the various tanks and channels, lengths and sizes of PVC pipe, corrugated plastic sheets for the lamella, and valves and adapters. This will allow them to have a better of idea of what is needed to construct an AguaClara plant. The Materials List will continue to be updated based on feedback from the engineers in Honduras so that it provides information that is most useful to them in the construction process. Since the values are specific to the plant being designed, it serves as a personalized yet universal link between the AguaClara team, the Automated Design Tool, and the creators of the plant.
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The first step in calculating the materials was to determine the geometry of the different components of the plant and which parts of the plant were constructed out of which types of materials (e.g. concrete, ferrous cement, corrugated plastic, PVC pipe). Then the volumes and quantities were calculated from the dimensions used in each components' design algorithm.
Entrance Tank
The Entrance tank volume was found using the design specifications from the automated entrance tank design program and the user inputs. The tank's volume is calculated by considering the four walls lengths, widths and thicknesses. A.EtFloor defines the area of the entrance tank floor. A.EtWalls defines the area of the entrance tank walls.
Vol.EtWalls calculates the volume of the entrance tank walls .H.Et is and is a function of the height of the entrance tank . L(H.Et is ), the length of the entrance tank . W(L.Et is ), the width of the entrance tank . T.EtWall is (W.Et), and the thickness of the entrance tank wall(T.EtWall).
Flocculation Tank
The total area of the walls of the flocculation tank depends on the total number of floc channels and the length of the sedimentation tank.
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