DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING OF A RACECAR PROTOTYPE VEHICLE
About
During my bachelor studies, I worked as a part of 45 students working in designing a formula-style race car. A separate team of students worked in designing the chassis frame for this vehicle. The chassis frame used by the previous team was thoroughly analyzed for areas of improvement in terms of reliability, maximum adjustability, weight reduction, better stiffness performance, and manufacturability.
As an initial phase, a mock chassis was developed to ensure enough room for the driver's egress and improved visibility.
We decided to use a tubular spaceframe due to its low cost and ease of construction.
The goal was to reduce the frame's overall weight from 40kg to 30kg while maximizing the torsional stiffness of the frame. The total frame was designed using Solidworks using the Trim and Extend feature.
After considering major improvement parameters and design constraints, a frame design was finalized as shown below.
INITIAL DESIGN
This frame design was considered to be bulky with unnecessary frame sections.
OPTIMIZED DESIGN
The improved design was compact, yet met all the packaging requirements for the driver and vehicle components.
Analysis and Validation
Once the frame design was finalized, it was time to perform certain analysis to find the frame's bending and torsional stiffness.
The torsional stiffness of the structure was 1342 N-m/deg, which was a very good improvement to the baseline design's torsional stiffness of 1215 N-m/deg.
Impact Test
Following this, the frame was subject to various loading conditions simulating impact scenarios such as
Frontal Impact
Rear Impact
Side Impact
Rear Impact.
ANSYS R17 was used for the analysis part.
