COVID-19 Challenges

Due to the current unpredictable and dangerous situation facing the world, Purdue Formula SAE has chosen to extend the design cycle of our upcoming car from one to two years. Though this is not an ideal solution, we feel it is the most responsible decision for our members as well as for the greater Purdue engineering community. That said we plan to make the best of the additional time for the design of future vehicles to take a step back and start the design challenge posed by SAE with a blank sheet of paper. In addition, the team’s leaders, myself included, have chosen to refocus much of our energy on the education, training, and development of our talented teams of new and returning members who will form the future of Purdue FSAE.

PF21-22

Analysis

One of the major focuses of the 2021-22 competition season is to improve the quality and documentation of analysis completed by the team throughout the year. In order to accomplish this I generated a simple design notebook format to be used by team members to update progress on their projects through the team wiki. In addition, further updating of the Lateral Load Transfer Distribution test used for the PF20 vehicle is in progress as well as other structures projects using both ANSYS and custom calculators.

Design

The current PF21-22 chassis design is an updated version of the PF20 chassis with changes largely driven by lessons learned from the 2020 season as well as feedback from other team leads and drivers. Some changes include improved load paths for the differential mounting locations, slight ergonomic changes included a wider main roll hoop, and improved manufacturability through use of bent tubes through specific nodes. Over the coming months this design and others created by the team will be compared to determine the optimal chassis configuration moving forward.

Manual Shifter

One major change from the 2020 season will be the move to a manual shifter to increase reliability over the previously used electronic shifting mechanism. The current design is based on designs the team has used successfully in the past as well as mechanisms used by other teams. This design integrates both the functionality of the shifter and the clutch into one system which also automatically actuates the clutch on downshifts.

Education and CAD Practices

A major focus of this year is the education of both new and current team members to improve the overall skill and ability of the entire team. As I am the most experienced NX 12 user on the team I created a number of video tutorials outlining basic training exercises as well as tool specific tutorials. In addition to these tutorials, I also collaborated with other team leadership to generate CAD practices which encompass the entire team to ensure consistent and stable model generation. The naming convention shown below is an example of this.