Solar Panel Mounting on Light Poles
Summary
This was an open-ended project where you selected a problem as a group and solved it by specifying components we learned about in MECH 325. One of my teammates had worked with a company in Dubai that wanted to install solar panels on light poles to generate electricity. I developed the design below that uses two hydraulic pistons to cover the necessary angle range.
With this design and knowledge that we would use hydraulics as our linear actuators, I created a hydraulic circuit allowing proper control.
With the general design, we could look into what loads we expect the panels to undergo. From my research, we needed to specify loads for two operating conditions, stowed and operational. In the stowed configuration, the panels needed to withstand the same max windspeed as the light poles: hurricane wind speeds. In the operational configuration, it needs to be strong enough to work in the peak yearly wind speeds. With these loads and general design, I passed this information to another group member who worked on finding catalogue components that would suit our project. Refer to the report below for a more in-depth look into the project.