Yup! It’s about that time every senior attempting to graduate encounters: THE final project…

I am an Industrial Engineering major working on a project that’s about detecting water inside army shelters. You see, this company has these shelters made of aluminum and foam inside, and somehow the aluminum is coming apart from the foam and water pockets are developing inside, making the shelter weak and unsafe.

The question is: How do we detect the water inside, and how do we prevent the water from coming in? So far, we’ve planned to soak the shelter, let it get wet until we can use either an ultrasonic or an infrared device to graphically show us where the water is at (the company is willing to spend up to $10,000 on a devicce).

Finding the device is not hard…we call some companies, get quotes, get them to do a demo…blah blah blah. BUT how do we prevent water from penetrating in the first place? What kind of tests should we do? In general, we are just having a tough time coming up with different methods to study the shelter in order to determine ways to prevent water from coming in.

Got any ideas?