Hoover Craft
Supervisors:
Dr. Keith Hekman.
Team
Members:
Ahmed Waguih
Ahmed Hashem
Amira Hussein
Amr Karara
Audi El-Bitar
Mohammad Badr
Objectives:
The goal of this project is to design and manufacture a light hovercraft (having
an unladen load weight of less than 1000kg) for one person that is safe and
reliable. It is also desired to minimize costs without affecting the
hovercraft's performance. In part one of the thesis, the design of the
hovercraft was investigated in details, in order to come up with a suitable
model. The design is mainly concerned with light hovercrafts, focusing on
operational theory, design limitations and light hovercraft application.
Achievements:
The complete design of all component of the hovercraft was done (Hull, fan,
steering and skirt) and manufactured. An appropriate two stock engine (Yamaha RD
400 model 1979, 43 HP at 7500 rpm) was chosen and was adjusted and mounted on
the hovercraft prototype. The total cost of manufacturing the hovercraft was
9340 Egyptian pound.
The main problem that was faced which lead to failure of the
hovercraft was associated with the crankshaft adaptor. It kept failing under the
load and torque of operation. The small pulley was placed at the end of the
engine's shaft, which introduced a cantilever beam loading, also vibrations
produced by the engine aggravated the problem which leads to the loosening of
the crankshaft adaptor and failure occurred after few minutes of operating the
hovercraft when the desired RPM was reached. A solution was recommended for this
problem and it consists of properly designing the engine's frame to fit two
self-aligning roller bearings that would hold the shaft of the engine and would
minimize the deflection and misalignment. Also a clutch system can be used in
order to minimize the starting torque. The engine would hence start alone after
it has gained the required RPM the clutch will be engaged to operate the fan.
Student
Evaluation:
1- How did you come up with the idea of the thesis?
Thesis Group members brainstormed together, the different
suggestions were valued depending on possibility of manufacturing, cost,
relevance to study coursework…etc.
Lastly, the members did the selection process depending on the valuation of
different ideas.
2- What difficulties did you face?
Difficulties included:
Contacting dealers and finding the parts.
Some parts needed to be imported.
Funding Problem.
Books in the library were not up-to-date.
Dealers in the Egyptian market did not know or hear ever about some parts. They
considered them New Inventions.
Doing the scheduled tasks on time.
3- Suggest any improvements or feasible recommendations?
Asking the groups for a GANTT chart for theses I & II in the
first two weeks of the semester.
A 30-Minutes meeting should be held weekly with the thesis advisor in order for
him/her to follow up and be able to evaluate the effort done by every member in
the group.
Estimating cost for the whole thesis project. The reliability of this estimate
should be evaluated by the advisor.
Engineering department fund the projects fully or partially.
Students should use AUC Labs and facilities for any manufacturing or design
process, unless the equipments needed do not exist at AUC. The decision to
manufacture in workshops outside AUC should be approved by the advisor.
