Week 1: Information and Procedure

Lab Date: April 3, 2014
Lab Occupations

• Lauren Kujawa, Secretary
• Tyler Wicker, Researcher
• Chris Gibson, Researcher
• Sal Realmuto, Researcher
• Gabe Markowitz, Researcher 

 Lab Procedures and Information

• April 3, 2014 was the first lab meeting of Engineering 103 Section 85.  The lab is a 10 week module with final presentation being done in class on the tenth week.  Each lab runs once a week for 2 hours.  The first hour of class was dedicated to introductions.  Our Professor for the lab section is Professor Jonathan (Shi-Chieh) Cheng, and the teaching fellow for the section is James Worcester.  The faculty discussed the basic principles of retaining walls and also showed pictures of different retaining walls used in the real world.  Our group does not know anything about retaining walls, so we will need to do much research.
• In this lab section, groups will be working to create a Geosynthetic Retaining Wall using paper as the retaining material.  The paper will be holding back as much sand as possible while using the least amount of paper.  
• After the introductions were over, groups were tasked to make a pre-proposal.  Our group ran through ideas watched videos that helped us develop an idea of what type of design our wall should take.  
• Our initial idea is to make the sheets of paper increase in length as the sand levels begin to increase.  If this does not work, we will be flipping the idea, making the longest pieces on the bottom instead.  We are also thinking of putting the paper in strips to create friction.
• After the pre-proposal was finished, groups could leave the lab.
• Below is a picture and video link that the group used as references to help develop our ideas for potential design ideas.

Figure 1: Image showing increasing restraints in a retaining wall.  This picture helped form one of our ideas for a wall design.

•  The following link is to a YouTube video that shows a Geo-Wall competition in which strips of paper were used to create friction to hold the sand in place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtRYMd1mwvw

 Post Lab

• Since a final design proposal is due next week, each group member will do research outside of lab to become better familiarized with retaining walls.  We are open to any ideas, and we understand that extensive research and testing will need to be done to become successful in this lab module.
• After lab, another idea was contemplated.  All of the videos that were watched showed groups attaching strips of paper to the main retaining piece of paper.  Some other videos on this wall design suggest that putting the paper in strips is the most effective way to hold back the sand.  This idea, along with our original ideas, will be tested multiple times.
• It is hoped that a final design will be agreed upon by Week 6 of this 10 week lab module.