Preliminary design tools applied to a solar powered vessel design: A South American river analysis

In South America the inland waterway transport is widely used in intermediate and minor cities located on the sides of big rivers. This is the case of the Magdalena river, in Colombia, which has been traditionally used for freight and passengers transport between communities with difficult land access. With the aim of upgrading the fluvial mobility in these communities, in a sustainable way, a first stage of design of a solar powered boat is proposed. To understand the influenced communities, in order to identify their needs, the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) tool was implemented, with the particularity that it uses, as inputs, the results from other preliminary design tools for analysing the need and the context. This enhances the possibility of a better process to translate Customer Requirements (CRs) into Engineering Characteristics (ECs). Additionally, a technical and competitive analysis was made to compare how other competitor products behave in agreement with the ECs. Finally, the QFD helped to prioritize the ECs, according to the impact on user's expectations. The global analysis showed that the case study has particularities, mainly because it requires low operation cost and high energy consumption, due to long trips with several passengers at high speeds.