In the 2019-2020 season, I served as Chassis Team Lead and led a group of 5 students designing the car’s carbon fiber chassis.

The year’s design was based off previous years’ data supporting the on-paper conclusion that our drag is dominated by rolling resistance, rather than aerodynamic drag. We reasoned that using larger diameter tires would decrease our rolling resistance (due to decreased sensitivity to bumps as well as a broader selection of bicycle tires at the standard 700c size) more than it would cost us in aerodynamics. The result was a “Wheels-Out” design.

As the chassis team lead, I took charge of developing a training program for the team where team members would learn ANSYS Fluent, as well as the underlying fluid dynamics principles, so that they could understand their simulations, and make good decisions.

We broke down our vehicle design into a few major design segments (nose design, ground clearance, tail geometry, etc.) and simulated different designs to come up with a single design.

Manufacturing the car was a herculean effort, as usual, and sadly one which was cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, one tremendous advancement which came about the year was the use of material samples to inform our carbon fiber layup process, which would have reduced the weight of the vehicle by approximately 40% compared to the previous year’s design!

I also mentored a project to test the material strength of a pre-fab carbon fiber tube sample in 3-point bending. This test laid the groundwork for future material testing on the team, as well as test-based design.