Design Report for EQUINOX VIRTUAL

Bhaskar Chouhan M.Tech 1st Year, R.N-11105016, bhaskarc@iitk.ac.in 26 March 2012

Abstract This paper involves discussion on the design procedure of the Baja vehicle EQUINOX VIRTUAL intended to participate in Baja SAE Asia 2010. The objectives of this mini-Baja competition are to design and manufacture a fun to drive, versatile, safe, durable, and high performance o road vehicle. Team have to ensure that the vehicle satises the limits of set rules. This vehicle must be capable of negotiating the most extreme terrain with condence and ease. Team has met these objectives by dividing the vehicle into its major component subsystems. Each team member was responsible for a specic system that was designed according to the objectives and given rules.

Introduction

Mini-Baja is an international collegiate design competition sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) that attracts engineering student teams from all over the world. Each teams goal is to design, build, test, promote, and compete with a prototype of a single seat o-road vehicle intended for production and eventual sale to the non-professional weekend racer. The main objective of the competition is to subject students to real-world engineering design projects and their associated challenges. The EQUINOX VIRTUAL 2010 MiniBaja team consists of 14 undergraduate students in Mechanical and Industrial production Engineering. This year, it is decided to create an entirely new vehicle to compete in the competition.

Design for Equinox Virtual

Determination of design parameters Setting of design objectives Evaluation of designed produced Collection of technical detail of components Analysis of results

2.1

Material Selection

The roll cage material as per rule book has the values of bending stiness and bending strength have to be calculated about an axis that gives the lowest value. Bending stiness is proportional by the EI product and bending strength is given by the value of Sy I/c, (for 1018 steel the values are; Sy = 370 Mpa E=205 GPa).The tubes have cross section 1 inch outer diameter and 0.035 inch thickness.

2.2

Roll-Cage

Design objective of roll cage are: Provide full protection of the driver, by obtaining required strength and torsional rigidity, while reducing weight through diligent tubing selection

 Design for manufacturability, as well as cost reduction, to ensure both material and manufacturing costs are competitive with other SAE vehicles Improve driver comfort by providing more lateral space and leg room in the driver compartment Maintain ease of serviceability by ensuring that roll cage members do not interfere with other subsystems

2.3

Main Element of the Rollcage

Rear Roll Hoop (RRH) Roll Hoop Overhead Members (RHO) Front Bracing Members (FBM) Lateral Cross Member (LC) Side impact members(SIM) Lateral Diagonal Bracing (LBD) Lower Frame Side (LFS) Front Lateral Cross Member (FLC)

2.4
2.4.1

Modelling Process of Rollcage

Design

The modeling of the roll cage has been done on Autodesk Inventor Professional -2009 and Pro-Engineer 3.0, to use the advanced features of this software, to model, simulate and analyze the design of the roll cage. Being the fundamental part, time and eort have been put into this process for designing Roll cage.

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Figure 1: Pictures of Roll Cage Elements

2.4.2

RRH and SF

The drivers seat may not intrude into the plane(s) of the RRH. The upper junctions in straight-tube construction shall dene points BR and BL. If bent-tube construction is used, points BR and BL will occur at the upper end of each bend. The RRH (gure 1-a) shall extend upward vertically 20 degrees from points A to points B. The RRH must also be a minimum of 73.6 cm (29 in) wide at 68.6 cm (27in) above the drivers seat SF frame is set at an angle of 45deg and the width is 10 inches so that A arms can be mounted at 8.5 inches (vertical distance). 2.4.3 Extended Hitch Frame

It ( Figure 1-c) is provided in order: to give better aesthetic looks to meet the constraint of FBM (gure 1-d)of 45 deg to meet the constraint of Side Impact members (SIM) of 8-14 inches from seat base. 2.4.4 SIM

SIM (gure 1-e) is made wider at the drivers end and is kept this time in a single plane so in order to reduce the get out time of the driver from the cockpit and as per driver comfort during gear changing and vehicle riding.

2.5

Modelling of Steering on ADAMS VIEW

We are proposing two steering models One that is Ackerman type steering model in which Rack is behind the wheel axis. Another is Reverse Ackerman type steering model in which Rack is in front of wheel axis The simulation of steering systems has been performed on ADAMS VIEW (gure 2-a) and basic Ackerman law for steering has been satised with errors in agreeable limits.

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Figure 2: Modelling of steering on Adams (a), and Brakes on Pro-E (b-c)

2.6

Brakes

According to rule book[1]- The car must be equipped with a hydraulic braking system that acts on all wheels and is operated by a single foot. The brake system must be capable of locking ALL FOUR wheels in a static condition and dynamically on pavement or an unpaved surface. Independent Brake Circuit Take all this in consideration we use H- type brake circuit conguration for equinox virtual.

2.6.1

Type of brake use for Equinox Virtural

Hydraulically operated Disc brake in front tires (gure 2-b) Drum brake in rear tires (gure 2-c)

2.7

Power Train

To utilize the full power output of the 338cc lombardini LGA-340, 8 kW petrol engine, a four speed transmission with a reverse, is designed to provide a low and high gear range. With the cockpit mounted shift lever in low gear, the driver has the torque available for towing heavy loads, climbing steep gradients, and driving through mud and loose sand. The high gear is designed for top speed and acceleration. Modeling of gear train is done on Autodesk Inventor Professional 2009 (gure 3-a) according to the result obtain from the calculation of design.

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Figure 3: Modelling of Powertrain on Pro-E(a) and Suspension system on Adams(b)

2.8

Suspension

Double wishbone type suspension system (gure 3-b) has been incorporated in the vehicle. The use of double wishbone system aids in the stability of vehicle handling parameters such as camber angle, caster angle and hence maintain the pitching and rolling stability of the vehicle during cornering and bumps. A Mini-Baja suspension system must satisfy the following design requirements: Provide sucient sprung mass vibration isolation to maintain satisfactory ride quality, while maintaining high tire-ground contact rate and low tire vertical load uctuation rate to improve road holding and handling Control movement at the wheels during vertical suspension travel and steering, both of which inuence handling and stability Prevent excessively high jacking forces by managing static roll center location and roll center migration

FEA Analysis

To properly approximate the loading that the vehicle will see, an analysis of the impact loading seen in the various types of accident was required. To properly model the impact force the deceleration of the vehicle after impact needs to be found. To approximate the worst case scenario that the vehicle will see, momentum equations were used to determine the deceleration of the vehicle. The vehicle was considered to be at speeds of 50 kmph and according to dierent scenarios the conditions of head on impacts ,oblique collisions, and inelastic or partially elastic collisions were employed with a crash pulse consideration of 0.1-0.15s .the maximum deceleration came out to be 7.5g (g=9.8m/s2 ). The values for other scenarios was calculated as follows 4

 As a side impact is most likely to occur with the vehicle being hit by another the Baja vehicle, it was assumed that neither vehicle would be a xed object. Referring to automotive industry safety test, which also makes the equivalent assumption, the impact force was assumed to be half that of head on collision with a xed object or a deceleration of 3.75gs. Due to the damping eects of the shock absorbers in the suspension, the forces seen on the shock mounts were also assumes to be 3.5gs. This value is an extreme overestimation, but will allow the ability to account for a blown shock absorber. As the impact on the roll cage in a roll over is most often a secondary impact or a glancing blow, it was assumed that the roll cage would see a deceleration of approximately 2.5 gs. In all the above cases the transient analysis approach was taken to generalize the problem and account for the time variant behavior of impact load application .the time of crash pulse was divided into 100 steps each comprising of 1ms .The results arrived are shown in gures below and explained in next section.

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[e] Figure 4: FEA Analysis

3.1

Stress Analysis

Front Collision (gure 4-a) -Higher values of stresses were indicated at the SIM and suggested improvement in the truss provided, the initial values of stresses in the tube section were 237 MPa which exceeded the permissible value of 200 MPa (FOS=1.8). Hence truss modication was done. After truss modication the stress value has been lowered to 185 MPa which is under the permissible value. After truss modication on SIM member (gure 4-b) Max stress in the section After truss modication Deformation Analysis(gure 4-c) Roll Over Impact (gure 4-d) Deection (gure 4-e) 237 Mpa 185 Mpa

Technical Specication of EQUINOX VIRTUAL

Figure 5: Technical Specication

Conclusion

The usage of nite element analysis was invaluable to the design and analysis of the frame for equinox virtual. The analysis allowed the addition of two important and key structural components to help the vehicle with stand front and side impacts as well as the forces due to the loading of the shock mounts. However there are always scopes for improvements and after FEA analysis we are working now on aesthetic parts on the roll cage.

Acknowledgment

We regard it as our proud privilege to work under Mr. Kartikeya Tripathi, our faculty advisor from Mechanical Engg. Deptt. and express our indebtness and sincere gratitude, for his valuable guidance, generous help and constant encouragement at every stage in the preparation of this work. We also take this opportunity to thank Mr.Durgesh Joshi, faculty advisor of SAE SGSITS collegiate club for IPE Deptt. For his help and making arrangements for various solid modeling and FEA soft wares.

References
[1] onsolidated Rules for Baja SAE Asia-2009 [2] eisler, Automobile Engineering [3] ack Erjavec Automotive Technology [4] ohn Fenton Handbook of vehicle design analysis