This week our team has been preparing for one of the most important milestones in our project, the System Level Design Review (SLDR). This phase marks our transition from conceptual validation to detailed system refinement, where we must demonstrate a strong understanding of both our design and simulation results.

A major focus this week has been improving our ANSYS model. We’ve spent hours running simulations, adjusting parameters, and validating assumptions to ensure that our data accurately reflects our design’s behavior. Through this process, we identified key simplifications to make our simulations more manageable, such as maintaining a constant velocity and density throughout the analysis. These assumptions help us balance realism with computational efficiency.

Learning Ansys has been a challenge in itself: the software is powerful but complex. Interpreting the data that comes out of our simulations has required careful study and collaboration. Despite the steep learning curve, we’re gradually becoming more confident with the tool, thanks to continuous testing, peer discussions, and countless tutorial videos.

As we prepare for the SLDR, we’re proud of the progress we’ve made in understanding computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and how it applies to our prototype. Each week, our simulations become more refined, our data more reliable, and our teamwork stronger.

Next week, we’ll continue improving our Ansys models and finalizing our report so that we can confidently present our findings to reviewers. The learning process hasn’t been easy, but it’s been deeply rewarding, and we’re excited to showcase how far our team has come.