Engineering Relief for Haiti: An IEEE Publication and a Grand Summer Research Project

In January of 2010, Haiti suffered a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that left 1.5 million people homeless, surrounded by plastic waste that has become a national crisis on the island. Four years later, the 2014 Grand Summer Challenge team was tasked to address these two major problems in just one month.

In case you are unfamiliar with the Grand Challenges, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has identified 14 "'Grand Challenges' that must be addressed in order to achieve a sustainable, economically robust, and politically stable future." These challenges include:

• advance personalized learning

• make solar energy economical

• enhance virtual reality

• reverse-engineer the brain

• engineer better medicines

• advance health informatics

• restore and improve urban infrastructure

• secure cyberspace

• provide energy from fusion

• prevent nuclear terror

• manage the nitrogen cycle

• develop carbon sequestration methods

• engineer the tools of scientific discovery

For the duration of the summer, we focused on making solar energy economical in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. (Intrigued by these challenges and want to learn more? Visit the NAE Grand Challenges for Engineering website here)

Before we get to the pinnacle of this summer research, allow me to quickly explain the background of how I got involved in this project:

At the time of this challenge, the program was comprised of three classes at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology - RH 330 Technical Communications, a science elective, and a technical elective, making the summer class a total of 12 credit hours. As a freshman transitioning into the sophomore curriculum, I saw this as a great opportunity to launch my engineering career, and it did - this was truly the starting point and eye-opener of my career.

Our team was initially tasked with finding a solution to a problem in Haiti - creating wells for water storage that could filter while being collected, a safer alternative to the amount of time we were given, or to risk doing something that hadn't been done before and creating plastic building materials for safer housing. Of course there were other issues we could have focused on - energy solutions, viable farming options, or just plastic reduction in general. We tackled these issues, defining problems and researching what other innovators have done to attempt to solve them. Ultimately, it came down to whether or not we wanted to be safe and explore what we knew, or branch out and attempt what had not been accomplished. The latter was what we spent the next five weeks on.

Extensive research and calculations were made into the development of a 9-foot solar cooker, capable of reaching 110° C by using double-paneled panes that could be adjusted atdifferent angles to maximize the radiation of the sun. Models using COMSOL and SolidEdge software helped determine the materials needed to reach our target temperature, keeping in mind the limited resources Haiti would have provided and the time the sun would be present in the Western Hemisphere. Plastic resins and their structures were studied to find matching melting

Initial tests were conducted, such as the factor of loss of two different aluminum samples, one with black paint and the other untouched, to find the percentage of heat loss in the system. Once the specific heat and FOL was found, material selection and preventative methods were used to conserve as much heat as possible. Materials and their physical and chemical properties were matched with respect to their natural heat fluxes that occur naturally and in a blackbody radiation situation. With the testing and production of the actual product, different agents were tested with high-density polyethylene, or HDPE, in order to get the correct consistency for pressing 2x4 lumber. Again, specific heat of vegetable oil was calculated to include the amount of energy that would be needed to reach 110°C. Once the material, a mixture of shredded plastic bags and vegetable oil, reached a gum-paste texture, it was "poured" into a 2x4 template where pressure was applied to allow the board to be flushed to the die.

Unfortunately, although some boards were a success, others did not pass the durability and compression tests, only being able to support 2,008 psi instead of the average white pine lumber stress of 4,800 psi. A compression test revealed the randomness of how the pieces bonded, some being a complete mix while others leaving gaps from unmelted plastic. Finally, a 4-point bend test revealed that the bending stress of our plastic lumber did not meet the average bending stress of white pine - 8,600 psi.

Although our design generated the idea of what a desired product would be, many improvements could be made in several areas which could benefit this project and its potential.

Being one of the youngest members of the 8-person team, ​I relied on my peers when it came to concepts I hadn't touched yet, such as thermodynamics, conservation applications, and heat transfer. However, with the leadership skills I already brought to the team, the creativity my personality and experience brought to the design, and the adaptability to learn the concepts in order to apply them, I quickly landed the project management position for the summer and accrued leadership skills that I will soon utilize in industry. Overall, I learned the value of exploiting your teammates' talents to different areas of a project, how to motivate a team to take risk and chase after the unknown, and the engineering design process that I hope to one day be a part of every day in my future career.

For more information on the project, including our original design proposal with calculations and data:

Publication: IEEE - Engineering Relief for Haiti

Design Proposal: Summer 2014 Grand Challenge Program: Haiti Disaster Relief