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SAE Electric Baja — Full Chassis Design
Material to metal in 3.5 months. Runner-up of 36 teams.
All India Ranking
#2 out of 36
Weld joints
37
Dimensional Accuracy
± 15mm
Material Cost reduction
17%
THE BUILD
Front suspension geometry, A-arm architecture, lower chassis rails, and coil-overs; pre-competition shakedown.
DESIGN
Space frame geometry — rollover protection, driver cell, rear drivetrain bay.
Full Chassis design and Assembly - CAD
Full tube chassis designed in SolidWorks from scratch. AISI 4130 chromoly selected over AISI 1020 (460 MPa vs 350 MPa yield strength), through FEA-backed trade studies that cut material cost by 17% within SAE load constraints. TIG welded with ER 70S-2 filler. Knuckles, hubs, and firewall in Al 6061-T6.
Structural Analysis
Load cases derived from hand calculations — top speed, vehicle weight, drop height — validated in ANSYS before the first tube was cut.
Explicit Dynamics · Frontal drop · 17.8mm max deformation
Static Structural · Rear Impact · 2.4mm max deformation
Static Structural · Rollover · 1.9mm max deformation
Fabrication
Fabrication jig designed by extracting 2D frame cross-sections from SolidWorks and extruding them into a milled wooden fixture. Two iterations resolved scaling deviations from the in-house milling machine. 37 weld joints; all critical dimensions within ±15mm. Zero material waste.
Results
Runner-up · 36 teams · 3-hour endurance race · no structural failure.
SKILLS
SolidWorks · NX · ANSYS Explicit Dynamics · Static Structural · FMEA· GD&T ASME Y14.5 · Material Selection · Trade-off Analysis · Fabrication Jig Design · FEA · DFM · TIG Weld Supervision
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