Andrew Sargent's Individual Contribution Page

Summer 2009 Contributions

I worked with Nanditha Ramachandra on creating the Automated Materials List. We went through the Variable Naming Guide and found all the necessary variables to calculate the different volumes and surface areas for each of the plant's components. From those computations, we found the total amount of material needed to construct each component and, ultimately, the entire plant. We then created the Automated Materials List Design Program page and included both the inputs and outputs for the algorithm.

Upon gaining a better understanding of the configuration of the plants, we went through and reconstructed some of our equations to represent the current design process. After improving the calculations, we looked into the idea of including a price list but that idea was later deemed unnecessary.

We successfully ran our completed Materials List through the design tool and fined tuned the wiki page. We also received feedback from the engineers in Honduras. They posed an idea for a more efficient format and we began implementing it. The engineers also explained some of the newer component designs and how we could change the formulas to match the updated plans.

Finally, we made a list of the future challenges for the next students that work on the materials list and also added a link to the design tool server on the materials list wiki page.

Pages Created

Automated Materials List Design Program
Automated Materials List Inputs
Automated Materials List Outputs