Constraints, Dimensions, and Optimization

The necessary constraints to be able to optimize the bottle included the following:
volume of the bottle had to be 30.5 inches, height of the bottle could not be more than 10 inches,
the base radius could not be less than 0.75 inches, the opening radius could not be less than 0.25
inches, and the minimum allowable neck radius was 1.68 inches.
According to Dorchester County Health Department, an average American consumes
about 230 mg of caffeine daily, which is about 3 cups of 9 ounces. With this information our
group knew that the volume of the bottle had to be 30.5 cubed inches because the ideal travel
bottle needed to hold more than 9 ounces of coffee and while randomly plugging in numbers to
our equations and running the solver add-on in Excel, 30.5 was the maximum volume my team
was able to get while taking in consideration the rest of the constraints.
The height of the bottle was allowed a maximum height of 10 inches because the average
Thermos® travel bottles displayed on the Thermos® website ranged from 9 to 10 inches tall. As
a group, we decided that 10 inches would have been a good number for the maximum height
because it was a number that would make the bottle tall enough to hold more ounces but not too
tall, so the customer can have a good grip when holding the bottle. Also, the container that we
were creating had to also be realistic; therefore, anything higher than 10 inches seemed
inconvenient as a container that would be used for people on the go.
The base radius could not be less than 0.75 inches because mugs that were found in stores
like Target® and IKEA® had smaller radii in the bottom than the top. Our ideal was to give our
optimized bottle a home mug feeling with the advantage of the container to be a travel container.
The opening radius was set to 0.25 inches because we wanted to leave a big enough opening so
the travel bottle could have different options for the cap used. For example, the cap for the travel
bottle could be a bottle cap carabiner or a typical sport cap.
The minimum allowable neck radius was set for 1.68 inches because our group wanted to
have the travel bottle’s shape looking like a ceramic mug as much as possible, so the neck
needed to be as wide as possible. Also, when randomly putting in values for the radii, the lowest
radius recorded was 1.68 when using the solver add-on in Excel. The group noticed the number
appearing multiple times when the solver was running; therefore, 1.68 was the chosen minimum
neck radius. Although our opening radius was smaller than the neck radius, we did not consider
the opening radius part of the neck radius because we set the neck radius to be from segment 4 to
18.
With these constraints, we began the optimization process for our travel bottle. As a
group, we decided to have 25 segments with varying segment lengths, which depended on the
angle of orientations for each segment. For our x-values, we used the equations for r, and for our
y-values, we used the equations for z. For example, r1 = rx= r0 + s*cos θ1 and z1 = zy= z0 + s*sin
θ1. However, our team needed to come up with starting points for the equations to work, so our
starting (x.y) coordinate was (1,0), and the starting theta value was 𝜋𝜋/2. However, our group
knew that the theta values for each segment would change; therefore, we knew that our starting
theta value was going to probably change.
After this, we calculated the surface area and volume for each segment with the following
1
equations, respectively: 𝐴𝐴𝑖𝑖 = 𝜋𝜋(𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑖 + 𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑖−1 ) ∗ 𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑖 and 𝑉𝑉𝑖𝑖 = 3 𝜋𝜋𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑖 (𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑖 2 + 𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑖 𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑖−1 + 𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑖−1 2 ) where r was
the x-value and 𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑖 was the sector height. The sector height was calculated by subtracting the y
value in which the segment was in by the previous y value, and the slant length was calculated
using the following equation: 𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑖 = �(𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑖 2 + (𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑖 − 𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑖−1 )2 ). Our group knew the exact number that
the ending total volume, the sum of the segment volumes, would be; therefore, that equation was
not going to be optimized. Consequently, our group decided to optimize the total surface area,
which was the sum of all the surface areas from each of the segments.
Other equations that were included in our Excel sheet were the total segment height,
which was the sum of all of all segment’s heights, the performance factor, which was calculated
by subtracting the surface area of the bottle and the surface area of a sphere with the same
volume as our container, then dividing the value from the subtraction by the surface area of the
sphere, and multiplying the value obtained from the division by 100.
The ending dimensions for the optimized bottle were the following:
Height: 8.97 inches
Opening Radius: 0.875 inches
Base Radius: 1.000 in
Volume: 30.50 cubic inches
Quantity Able to Hold: 16.9 ounces

When we ran the solver, the ending x, y, theta, surface area, segment height, segment
volumes values were obtained and are shown below:
 The side of the optimized bottle and the ending values for the total segment heights,
performance factor, surface area of a sphere with the same volume as our bottle, the total
volume, and the total surface area, which was the equation optimized, are shown in the next
page:
Pictures of the prototype of the travel bottle are shown below: