Design and manufacture of a composite and lightweight metallic personal belongings carrier for the homeless community-Phase I

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A recent national report by the Canadian Homelessness Research Network (CHRN) and the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness showed that nearly 30,000 Canadians are homeless every night. Despite periodic success in addressing homelessness problem, little progress has been made toward more permanent and sustainable solution. To assist in moving toward the latter solution, the Metro Community in the Okanagan region in collaboration with several other parties, including Waterplay Solutions Corp as a leading local manufacture, the University of British Columbia-Okanagan Campus, City of Kelowna RCMP, and members from homeless community has initiated a unique initiative to design and manufacture a Personal Belongings Carrier (PBC) which will be a secure and mobile structure providing an alternative to open public spaces or shopping carts for the homeless to manage their personal belongings. Ultimately, the introduction of this engineering product is intended to foster an increased sense of security for the homeless and provide them with an opportunity to store their belongings, while managing other aspects of their lives. As the first phase of the above collaborative industry-university-community initiative, the university team and Waterplay Solutions Corp through this NSERC project will assess the glass fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP) as a promising candidate material type for the PBC product, owing to its light weights, high mechanical properties, manufacturability, and durability. More specifically, through an advanced multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach an optimum GFRP laminate is desired which can meet all design requirements for the PBC, including resistance to natural weathering variations. The main factors to be considered during laminate selection will include the polymer matrix material/cure kinetics, fibre volume fraction, laminate lay-up, and hygrothermal performance. Next to its exclusive contribution to the PBC initiative, the knowledge to be gained from this research is expected to results in best-practice guidelines for other Canadian manufacturers as to how different GFRP laminates would score against environmental durability criteria for outdoor applications.