The car assembly, with the non-transparent items being either designed by me completely or with direct involvement.
Above is a suspension arm FEA, using a new to the team construction with waterjet “inserts” that housed the spherical bearing as well as located the tubes at the angle. This reduced welding deflection and put strength in the high stress area. Care was taken to simulate the welded component, with consideration of stress risers. Some compromise was made for packaging around the drivetrain and frame. These were made of 1018 and 4130 and were heat treated post welding.
A complex architecture of sketches governed both the frame and suspension, while also locating the engine and it’s subsystems. This was a fist for the team, that usually located things manually or without helper sketches, and so made for much more difficult cross-system iterations. This system was improved and then kept for the 2018 Baja car, 2019 Racecar, 2020 Racecar, and even for the 2021 team – with help of a step by step guide that I made.
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2018 Racecar - Suspension Lead
My primary duty that year was suspension – both linkage packaging, kinematics, structural design, and vehicle handling. Some work was also done setting up the main CAD assembly, with in-context relations, to save time integrating with the frame. The initial Frame CAD was also done, until the Frame system lead was able to take over.
