MIE.15 – UIC Strength and Conditioning – Force Plate

• Mouneeb Kanaan
• Nuh Ozbag
• Karol Rzeminski
• Matt Skupien
• Sebastian Stolarek

The UIC Strength and Conditioning department struggles with accurately and consistently gauging the current status of their athletes. Their goal it to find their peak ability and then be able to adjust their training prior to competitions so they can achieve peak performance. The device that we were tasked with designing is designed to measure the force of a medicine ball thrown at a force plate. Then, have consistent measurement to be displayed. The device for this purpose is a force plate that will be mounted on a wall and used to toss a medicine ball while the data is shown in real time. The device needs to measure force off of the impact of an object being thrown at it. The design requirements for the device includes: wall mountable, rapid data return, clear data feedback, and durable. Some alternative designs that we had, consisted of load cells and different shape plates. Some of the designs were too complex for our budget and resources. Therefore, we had to grab the best ideas from each design and put them into one. The main purpose of this device is to gauge the athletes on how much work they are putting in. Upon completion of the force plate, we were able to obtain consistent results. We saw that once the ball was thrown at our force plate, it was able to display consistent values from a fixed height. We also realized after hours of testing the design was durable enough to hold its shape without any damage to any parts in the force plate. The designed force plate was successful and completed the customer needs by displaying the athletes’ force output through a medicine ball.