Competition Chassis (2024 to 2025)
During my third year on Formula SAE, I remained as the lead chassis engineer. I held the responsibility for the design of the frame, packaging of the car, and manufacturing of the frame. During this design cycle, I focused on improving the frame teams analysis. I sized tubes/tabs initally with hand -calculations, then performed FEM analysis. Tubes were sized using beam model simulations, testing torsional, acceleration, cornering, and braking load cases. Breakout, finely meshed simulations where run for highly loaded tabs. Breaking these out into individual simulations greatly improved compute time.
I designed hybrid metal and 3D printed welding jigs, to reduce machining time while still being able to hold complex angles. Many jigs used the actual part, to ensure the fitup would be better post weld. Additionally, the chassis's torsional rigidity was physically tested, and compared to the FEM results.
Competition Chassis (2023 to 2024)
During my second year on Formula SAE, I became the lead chassis engineer, becoming in charge of overseeing 3 other engineers. I was responsible for the design of the frame, packaging the vehicle, and manufacturing the frame. During the design cycle, I reduced the weight of the chassis by ~5lb, by optimizing tube wall thickness and geometry. I lead team-wide packaging, working with all other systems to entire the frame could fit all components without spaceclaim interferences. SolidWorks Simulation was used to quickly model torsional rigidity, enabling quick iterations on tube placement and sizing. ANSYS Mechanical was used to run high fidelity, 3D meshed simulations of highly loaded tabs. Additionally, ergonomic data was used to drive frame dimenisions, so the driver could be more comfortable.
I designed manufacturing jigs out of metal and 3D printed parts, allowing us to jig complex angles without spending excessive time on machining metal parts. I created welding plans and orders to minimize the amount of heat inputed to these plastic parts.
Competition Chassis (2022 to 2023)
During my first year on Formula SAE, I joined the chassis subsystem. In terms of design, I primarily worked on iterating frame designs for increased torsional rigidity and reduced weight. Using SolidWorks Simulation and ANSYS Mechanical, I iterated the tube geometry to remove unneeded members, and add members that greatly improved our stifffness to weight ratio. In total, the frames weight was reduced by ~20 lbs, which is a 20% reduction from the previous year. I also researched various methods for removable joints, and analyzed them for stiffness, strength, and weight. This analysis helped justify a switch from a sleeved-butt joint to a double-lug joint, which weighted less and took less time to install/remove.
During the manufacturing cycle, I worked on designing welding jigs, enabling us to hold tight tolerances on critical compontents, like suspension mounting points. Additionally, I worked on designing and validating a bar to push the car, for use at competition. Finally, I worked on physically validating our chassis's torsional rigidity. Using scales and shims, I obtained a torsional rigidity value that was within 5% of my FEM simulations.
Rapid React Robot (2022)
During the 2021-2022 season, I oversaw the entire mechanical/electrical design and manufacturing of the competition robot. In this position, I managed the timelines fo 4 systems, lead system integration, as well as took ownership of the detailed design in three subsystems. I lead the design of the shooter, conveyance, and drivebase systems. We started the season by prototyping different mechanisms. These where simple wooden prototypes that allowed for fast iteration. I utilized a CNC router laser cutter to significantly reduce manufacturing time, while allowing an increase in part complexity. Autodesk Fusion 360 was used to model all systems and prototypes. These tools allowed prototyping, design, and manufacturing to be greatly accelerated, which enabled the team to spend more time on software testing and driver training.
For the shooter and conveyance systems, I designed them to be as simple as possible, with as few points of failure as possible. Simple flywheel and pulley mechanisms worked very reliability, improving greatly from the overengineered solutions the team had designed in previous years.
Infinite Recharge Robot (2019-2021)
During the 2019-2020 season, I lead a small team to design a storage and conveyance system for the year's game pieces. A spinning mechanism to index, store, and output the game balls was conceptualized, as it enabled us to store the maximium amount of allowed game peices in a compact format, leaving room for other systems. An adjustable prototype of this system was designed using Autodesk Fusuon 360, using wooden pannels and aluminum rods. The amount of rollers and dimensions (of rollers, compression of ball, etc.) were determined through testing of this prototype. A final PETG model was constructed using a CNC Router, programmed with Fusion 360 CAM. The design contributed to the robot going 7-9-0 in competition play, and making it to the our Regional Competition finals. Additionally, the robot won the Innovation in Control Award.
During the 2020-2021 season, the team worked to improve robots reliability. As part of this, I redesigned the spinning mechanism into a linear ball storage system. By moving to a conveyer with a more direct path for the balls to travel, the amount of jams was significantly reduced. This was prototyped with plywood as a proof of concept, and to test out a range of dimensions. Additionally, different combinations of pulleys, belts, and wheels where tested on this prototype. The system was designed to be integrated with the rest of the robot, without any design changes from other subsystems. The final version of the system was made in-house using a CNC router, programmed with Fusion 360 CAM. The new and simpler design greatly improved reliability and scoring potential.