This year, our chassis was manufactured by an external welding company. Although the overall measurements had been checked upon arrival, we realised when prototyping the motor housing that the rear of the chassis was the wrong shape. It was too far into the build to be altered so we had to make it work. I along with 2 peers was trained to angle grind and we removed the unwanted tabs so that new tabs could be rewelded. I have since helped the suspension team in redesigning their suspension system by facilitating the CAD modelling of the altered chassis and being involved in the problem-solving process of this redesign.

A worked with one of my chassis members to design, test and make the nose cone for our formula student car. This involved complex CAD design, prototyping & wind tunnel testing as well as using creative manufacturing methods to reduce the cost. The picture on the left shows the midway stage of the creation process, involving stacked up layers of insulation, cut to size using a waterjet cutter.

A key focus of last year and the upcoming year at UPRacing Electric is model validation. One validation that we plan to do this coming year is a torsional stiffness test whereby the rear of the chassis is fixed and the front rotated via a torsional force (weights on one side).  This test would validate our current Finite Element Analysis of the Torsional Stiffness. The picture on the left shows the midway point of the design process where we created an initial CAD model of the test rig.

Another test that will be undergone next year is a validation of the energy absorbing properties of a standard formula student impact attenuator (IA). This involves using a representative model of the front end of the chassis, including the anti intrusion plate (AIP) and a drop test to ensure that the IA can withstand the required forces.

Part of formula student involved budget constraints which means that we can't afford to get things wrong. For this reason, we often prototype our parts before manufacture. Examples of this include housing brackets, accumulator bases & frames and nose cone (pictured, although this was done for testing purposes)

Building a car is a huge project and with only 30 members of the team, its important for every member to improve their skills in a number of area. The skills that I excell at within the team include: 

• CAD (CREO & AutoCAD)

• FEA (Ansys)

• Documentation (DFMEA, PFMEA, BOM, COSHH Reports, H&S RA etc.)

• I am the only member of the team that can do all three of the following:

  • • Water Jetting (pictured)

    • Angle Grinding

    • Wind Tunnel Testing