Abstract:
Design can be defined as a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or
workings of a building, garment, or other object before it is built or made. Prototype is a
first or preliminary model of a product; e.g. a machine, from which other forms are
developed or copied. A find design should started as a prototype so that it can be tested
whether the product comply with the sets of requirement needed. In this research, a
preliminary design prototype of fish house for renewable energy research was studied.
Nowadays, fish farming activities is known as one of the sources of protein which is
important for human being. However, such activity is costly especially in terms of
operating costs which include electricity cost. The objective of this research has lead to
the development of three preliminary designs, in which the characteristics of the
prototype were determined. All the designs were virtually drawn into autographic
drawing in AutoCAD and 30 drawing in Google Sketch·Up. The characteristics of the
best and suitable design were determined using pairwise comparison chart (PCC) method
and morphological chart method. The actual prototype was built aftet the best and
suitable design was determined. Hollow steel bars and metal inert gas (MIG) welding
were used in building and completion of the prototype. Finally, the strength of the
structure was determined virtually using Pro Engineer software. The research shows that
the design, prototype and the strength analysis were preliminary at best, in which
detail/validation were not conducted within the time frame, however opens up new
frontier to expand the current research.
