Water Bottle Pressure Analysis

Date: Spring 2008

A joint project between Rich Pantaleo, Michael Cushman, Brad Hall and Nick Selman, the goal was to showcase CAD (Computer-Aided Design) and CAE (Computer-Aided Engineering) skills by creating models of an existing object and performing FEA (Finite-Element Analysis) techniques on the model. This project, which pitted an ordinary household water bottle against a new lightweight Nestle bottle in pressure analyses, showed the vulnerabilities of the new lightweight bottle near areas of high stress concentrations, namely in the corners of the pattern on the ergonomic base. The team used Solidworks to handle the solid modelling and stress analysis, and Rhinoceros to surface-model the complex ergonomic base found on the Nestle bottle.