Product Design — Capstone
Portable Fire-Suppression Skid
Structural redesign of a humanitarian-aid fire response unit to NFPA-aligned fire equipment practice, reducing build cost 35% and mass 40%.
Overview
GlobalMedic, a humanitarian aid organization, required a self-contained, transportable fire-response unit for deployment in areas without conventional apparatus access. The existing reference design was over-built for its duty cycle, driving up material cost and shipping mass.
As design lead for the structural subsystem, I re-engineered the frame and mounting architecture in SolidWorks and validated the redesign with finite element analysis (FEA) before any material was cut, targeting the load cases in the sponsor’s original specification.
The revised skid was built and load-tested as a physical prototype. It achieved a 35% reduction in build cost and over 40% reduction in mass relative to the baseline design, with no reduction in structural margin.
Scope of work
- Structural redesign of the frame, tank mounting, and equipment bay
- Finite element analysis of critical load cases prior to fabrication
- Design-for-manufacture review to reduce part count and cost
- Physical prototype build and validation testing