Stanford Solar Car Project

The Stanford Solar Car Project is the only hands-on, multidisciplinary student design group on campus. I joined my Sophomore year, and immediately started working on the design for our new car at the time, Apogee. I was interested in the suspension and steering systems, so I designed the steering geometry for the car and the system that would connect our suspension to the rack and pinion. My junior year, I participated in the construction of this new car, and learned a lot about electronics, solar cells, and composites construction. I milled many of the smaller parts for the suspension, and assembled the steering system which I designed. I also took on the project of building turnbars, which move the wheel covers so the wheels can steer enough to do a u-turn on a normal road. I had the chance to go to the World Solar Challenge in Australia as well as the American Solar Challenge a the senior mechanical team member and driver.

We recently finished building a new car, and I worked with a few team members to define the concept and design a completely new car (Xenith) with some remarkable advantages. It has half the frontal area of Apogee, which was achieved using fixed fairings, three-wheel steering, and a lot of clever suspension design. I also designed a titanium roll cage and performed finite element analysis for a number of loading cases. As a side project, I am learning how to shoot and edit HD digital video to document the solar car design and construction process. You can see some of the videos at http://youtube.com/susolarcar.