Dynamics SRR Takeaways

Overall Takeaways:

• Evaluate 3-wheel design for PDR

  • Solution:

    • Work on validating the car bit by bit on subsystem level

• Engineering drawing checks shouldn’t just be checked by a peer when made, but have a proper validation system

  • Solution:

    • Drawings should follow ASME-Y drawing standards

      • We can use the other two cars as reference for learning along with Google

    • In industry you can release something, then you can do three signatures (your immediate superior, then the lead, then the chief engineer or mechanical lead)

      • Our structure for this would be person manufacturing → system or subsystem leads → Andrew Chang, Mechanical Lead, or ChiefE

        • If a system lead or subsystem lead is the one manufacturing then the checking system should go as follows:
          system or subsystem lead → system lead or subsystem lead → Andrew Chang, Mechanical Lead, or ChiefE

    • Have a larger checking system to ensure that the parts that are being manufactured are known by the leads and everyone is on-board with how it is being made.

• +/- 5 pounds is a good start but doesn’t actually give us an idea of where to base our numbers on to know how much +/- we can actually do for weight

  • Solution:

    • Measure weight tolerance part by part instead to accurately know the weight if it’s going to be a machined surface then you can just estimate the part weight based on the material and be close to CAD since it should be pretty accurate when machined

    • If it’s something that we don’t machine then take the dimension of the part increase it by 5 thou and find the weight from that

• Make sure to use public channels for communication

  • Solution:

    • Use @messages rather than dms for technical conversations so everyone can learn from them or add feedback as needed. This has to be a collective effort that the system lead can’t completely manage.

• Regulations understanding

  • Solution:

    • Have everyone read our regulations related to dynamics + our VDR related to dynamics to help justify last year + new regs

Suspension Specific

• How do we ensure the 60/40 ratio for weight distribution

  • Solution:

    • Kayla I need help with this

• Aluminum welding or things that might be challenging shouldn’t be steered away from

  • Solution:

    • Look into what part might be challenging to make or might require aluminum welding and evaluate if the time taken to research and manufacture that is worth the time or would it be better to spend that time on a slightly less efficient part to optimize other parts

• Factor of Safety

  • Solution:

    • Create a list of what parts need a factor of safety, then you can holistically assign each part an accurate factor.

    • Some of our factors of safety come from regs + real-life conditions

• Fatigue

  • Solution:

    • Look further into fatigue analysis to understand cycle life

    • Look into aluminum fatigue since it does

• Shock spring rate

  • Solution:

    • Creating a shock characterization jig using a jig we made last year as a reference to help us find the spring rate

Steering Specific

• Evaluate bump steer:

  • Solution:

    • Look into the past and how to improve for the future

    • Talk to suspension about how their systems will work to account for that in the design for steering because steering would be easier to change to account for it rather than suspension

• Backlash issues with gearbox

  • Solution:

    • Issues that we think might occur with the gearbox of backlash might not be a factor that we need to consider seeing that combustion didn’t have those issues. Talk to the other teams for new designs we might look into like the gearbox

• If we get to tuning the steering and adding telemetry sensors accounting for rack vs upright

  • Solution:

    • Have a sensor on the upright or the wheel to see the difference between turn of the rack vs the turn of the wheel

• Tuning the steering:

  • Solution:

    • Look at the track to optimize our steering for the radii on the track race and see how the racing line for us would work vs the optimal steering line for formula cars

    • If we know the road for ASC try to see if we can map out our path for ASC and what turns it would expect us to take

• Effort to max speed, quantify it:

  • Solution:

    • Need to look into it further on how to quantify it

Unsprung Specific

• Quantify interference spacings better

  • Solution:

    • Look at how much the spacings were from last year and see what spacings the other LHR cars and industry use and then estimate a better interference spacing number from there

• Evaluate design decisions from last car

  • Solution:

    • Justify if we want to use the things from last car on this new car

      • Things like brake disks or brake pads

      • Bearings

• Tolerarcing for bearings

  • Solution:

    • If we plan on using SKF use their calculators and figure out how to tolerance them under our load conditions

      • They also have tolerancing posted for the bearings usually