Club Projects

I had the amazing opportunity to participate in the 2021 Formula SAE event as a Suspension Team Member during my first year on the team, where I was responsible for designing the inboard suspension. Since the competition was made virtual due to COVID, our score entirely relied on the rigor of our design. Suspension scored 17/25 for our team, tripling last year's score and securing our team's placement of 14th out of 51 teams.

I've embedded the slides I was responsible for to the left.

What I used/did/learned: SolidWorks, MATLAB, Excel, Ansys.

In order to facilitate suspension research for both this year and future years, I developed a calculator which takes our car's specs and our desired ride and roll rates as inputs, outputting desired shock specs for coil-over dampers and anti-roll bar specs. From there, we input our best match for these specs, and receive estimates for our ride characteristics. This spreadsheet also accounted for different units of measurement.

What I used/did/learned: Excel.

Similar to the Suspension Excel Calculator, I wanted to develop another tool to help facilitate research and design. Using MATLAB, I developed a script to calculate the inboard geometry characteristics throughout the wheel's entire motion, using the geometry's SolidWorks coordinates projected onto a 2D plane as inputs.

What I used/did/learned: MATLAB, SolidWorks.

In addition to regular load simulations for various parts, I used Ansys to mass-optimize the profile of the bellcranks used to transmit the forces on the tires to the shocks. The simulation parameters were set using the specs calculated by the projects above.

What I used/did/learned: Ansys.

One of my favorite mechanisms I designed during my years of high school robotics was a 2-stage cascading elevator to deposit totes onto a 6 ft. tall platform. This was the first time I had attempted to design a mechanism that would reach so far outside of our starting configuration. I was glad that it functioned in competition (see it moving during the first 20 seconds of this video), as I had to design around our extremely constrained budget and machining capabilities.

What I used/did/learned: Autodesk Inventor, Excel, machining.