team photo

Figure 1
project photo


Team 61

Team Members

Faculty Advisor

Patrick Miconi
Leila Awad
Edward Ramos
Kaley Luk

Dr. Jorge Paricio Garcia

Sponsor

Other

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Development of an Affordable Accessibility Ramp with an Emphasis on Recycled Materials

UConn CLAS reached out to the Mechanical Engineering Department to design and prototype an accessibility ramp that is modular, affordable, and has an emphasis on a construction method that uses recycled materials, while still upholding the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations. The accessibility ramp is designed to aid people with health conditions or impairments giving access to elevated surfaces with certain criteria for the ramp. Figure 1 shows the full design of the accessibility ramp. There are two main components that make up our ramp which are a run section and a landing section. The run section is composed of modular parts which are: run beams, aluminum angles, wheel guards, thin posts, wide posts, crossbars, and handrail loops. The landing section is composed of modular parts which are: landing beams, corner posts, an aluminum square frame, and cross bars.  The majority of the design is constructed with Fiber Reinforced Molded HDPE lumber. Recycled aluminum can be found in the following components of our design: starting ramp, legs, inverted t-insert, aluminum angle, and aluminum square frame. All of our modular parts are less than thirty pounds and are made out of recyclable and recycled materials. Our design is easy to assemble which eliminates the need to pay for a professional to assemble it.