2024-09-30 Mechanical Meeting

Announcements

• Action items I set from last week’s meeting:

  • Have week-by-week timelines in the daybreak gantt chart

  • Have material ready to set a track width, wheelbase, and CoG location

    • should be done around Wed

  • Have draft research proposal by EOD 9/28 - Advait

    • 1/3 are done, others will take longer (wants to have a well thought out procedure)

    • needs the three projects because of the amount of members

    • create a timeline for this as soon as you can (might be complicated because not everything is known) @Advait Joshi

  • Create a more detailed plan (roughly in general detail, doesn’t have to be hyper-specific) for onboarding over the next 5 weeks

    • Get frame off ASAP for composites (10/12)

  • Harshit didn’t fill out Gantt. Harshit didn’t know that it was different

• SRR is THIS SUNDAY starting @ 12pm

  • trial run for dynamics, aeroshell, and emech is on Friday evening

  • When to Meet: https://www.when2meet.com/?26784963-PWpPy

Machine Shop Certification

Please fill this excel sheet out with all members that need to be machine shop certified. Only include people that are priority (Tuesday night)

https://utexas.sharepoint.com/:x:/r/sites/ENGR-LonghornRacing/_layouts/15/Doc.aspx?sourcedoc=%7BD88CEAD1-E993-46BF-B9AF-D0F19DE82301%7D&file=Machine%20Shop%20Cert%20Initial%20Count.xlsx&action=default&mobileredirect=true

Ansys

Please ask members who need access to Ansys to fill this form out:

Microsoft Forms

SRR Takeaways

• Body did an exceptional job with their SRR practice. Here are a fewkey takeaways and tips I had:

  • Rename “Big rules” to “relevant regulations”

  • Include diagrams and images wherever possible to increase clarity and break up long periods of talking

  • Daybreak retrospective should be system specific

  • Go into the how and why when discussing mistakes made in the past

  • Be specific with your metrics when discussing improvement

  • Discuss how system goals tie into team goals

  • Break up long slides with text for clarity

    • Don’t be afraid to have information in the presenter notes

  • Be able to understand and explain any technical assertions you make (ex: explain why it is desirable when possible to have a larger tube with thinner walls than a smaller tube with thicker walls)

  • If you have validation plans for you metrics please include. Important to show how you will prove you met your goals

  • Be descriptive about operational processes (ie, what will you outsource)

  • When making comparisons between architecture decisions, use a decision matrix with weighted categories to explain your choice

What is something you struggled with this week? What is something you are proud of this week?

• SRR Deadlines

• Plan for workday was good and people liked it (even though one person felt like it was a bit repatatvie)

•  finishing all our work

• workday wasnt planned out as well as we wanted

• still proud of how we managed to get people involved

• doing work with 3 finals incoming
  
  

• first workday went hard

• midterms

• first workday was good

• I think I did good on my history exam

• 95 on circuit theory exam

Workday Review

everyone seems to be engaged

got feedback form our form from one person saying that it was interesting

• aerodynamics didnt have as clear of an outline as it should have for the first half of the day

• composites was maybe too technical and we’re not sure all the members understood everything

new recruits were excited and engaged (literally couldn’t get them to go to lunch, they were locked into SolidWorks)

real work starts next week, hopefully they’ll still be excited and engaged

• Dress to impress winners

• Electrical lecture by parthiv

Next Workday Plan

Suspension:

Starter project for all of them is to make a front suspension:
Assigning members / evaluating interest and projects: 

• Want to do machining, math?, calculations, vehicle dynamics?, etc. 

1 member : Rear trailing arm x unsprung member

1 member : Composite components collab w composites, > interest in load analysis, 

1 member :  Daybreak - 

1 member : Daybreak - 

Does anyone want to focus on manufacturing

Steering: Draw the bicycle model for using the previous cars dimensions in solidworks, correlate model with ackerman calculations and correlate ackerman angles with physical steering geometry (4 bar probably, maybe 6 bar)

Unsprun: Spend 3 hours on just going through unsprung together dimensions and finding out all the dependencies. Then go about who needs to do what design.

Aerodynamics:

• Keep building up solidworks knowledge, at least half the day spent teaching them how to do 3D parts, refining splines and relations(give them different parts to make on their own)

• Give them timeline for making the shell, design constraints and everything, find something they can do that helps forward the shell design w/o solidworks, maybe aerodynamics research?

Composites:

• continue research

• If frame is off then start refinishing aeroshell

• kevlar battery box layup

  • Dependent on if emech is ready for layup

Overall:

• Ansys tutorial?

New Members:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gCezsoceA3uDwGNFBQdVpyVjkoLY6drBHVTPxcQxkbU/edit

Old Members:

• Continue their respective projects that they received (for Frame that means composites research and starting to learn FEA, Ergo that means continue with daybreak repairs)

New Members:

• Cesar surface modeling lesson

• WE NEED TO ASSIGN SUBSYSTEMS

• More soliworks and ansys tutorials and hands on work. Introduce projects 3/4 of the day in.

Old Members:

• Work on universal enclosure

• Finish MVP of battery enclosure

• Motor controller cont.

• Set up new tasks for members

• Next gen heat pipe design

• Heat transfer calcs research

• Next gen 3-wheel electrical layout design for wiring efficiency

New Member Projects

(Two types of projects: starter project will actually go on the car, onboarding projects can be general learning experience)

suspension: reference sketch from vsusp control arm outputs using parameters

1 member : Rear trailing arm x unsprung member

1 member : Composite components collab w composites, > interest in load analysis, 

1 member :  Daybreak

1 member : Daybreak

Unsprung:

1 person rear swing arm

Sami working on Hub + Spindle design

1 person working on hub and spindle separate

Steven + 1 person working on upright

steering: Draw the bicycle model for using the previous cars dimensions in solidworks, correlate model with ackerman calculations

Composites:

Push rods and control arms: Aniq, Javi, and Akhilesh
Composite Frame: Medha, Sai and Jaden
Mold Prep: Ninette, Noya and Gaya
Resin infusion: Medha and Sai

• This one is is low effort so shouldn’t be an issue. also this is joint w/ conrad and one of his subleads

Aerodynamics:

• nose(3 members, 1 sim, 1 research, 1 CAD, or all go)

• tail(same)

• canopy(same)s

Frame:

• (onboard onboard onboard) SolidWorks Weldments and Ansys Practice -everyone

• Frame reference sketch - 1 person + Josh

• Tubular OC/Roll hoop iteration - 1 person

• Hybrid OC/Roll Hoop iteration- 1 new plus Noah

• Frame Jig - 1 person

Ergo

• (onboard onboard onboard) 1 week of SolidWorks CAD and FEA practice - everyone

• Dashboard - 1 person

• Ballast Box - 1 person

• Steering Wheel - 1 person

• Ergo Jig - 2 people

Wire Harnessing:

• EPLAN - Route the old battery as a starter project

  • Until EPLAN is accessible, using KiCad schematic

• Once they are familiar with smaller project, start working on current car

  • 2 members

Cooling:

• BB Intake daybreak

• BB Exhaust daybreak

  • 1 member

• Setup thermal env for battery

  • 1 member

Enclosures:

• Acetone Bath rig

  • 1 member

• Make adjustments to current enclosures to replace old hardware with slightly new ones

  • Manufacture as well so we can start testing

  • 1 member

Daybreak Progress?

nun.

Need to work on timeline.

Working on CG and dynamics characgteristics.

1/3 research proposals are done. Working in the others.

3 members per 3 of the research topics.

Working with other composites teams for research.

Pedal Box fixes in the works (pedal travel, brake light potentiometer, etc.)

Steering Wheel design in the works

Frame will frame soon?

• Motor controller power loss calcs done and cooling design progress made (options listed, designs brainstormed)

• New BB blower fans picked out

• Voltage/temp boards of battery done

• Internal pack design 90% done, need to do enclosure

Questions subsystems want to ask:

can one of my members work w composites as a main task this sem? @advait

at some point can we / do we want to do a mech joint lecture practice on FEA on a part or some shit - maybe noah led or smth

• Noah can do it, just need to know when to do it

same for master modeling from esther perhaps?

nah