Lions Racing has been active as a Formula Student Team since 2002. It has been an early goal for the team to not only be successful on but also off the racetrack.

A lot of our alumni are now themselves judges and organizers for the international engineering competitions of the Formula Student. It speaks for itself, that we as the following generation want to represent ourself as best as possible.

Experience has taught us that the decisions made during the competitions are often very subjective. For a team to stand out to the judges between all the strong competitors it is not just about showing them a great car but to present yourself as a professional and confident team.

The team leaders in the past took that to heart and it was discussed how to make that impression. Fine feathers make fine birds but what else is there?

Read 0 Comments... >>

Author: Ryo Masutani, Daisuke Ito, Sophia Racing

1. Introduction

High rigidity and lightweight are important factors in every frame of racing cars, and the same can be said for the vehicles of Formula SAE. So the frame had been designed to meet a better balance between rigidity and lightweight.

To achieve this aim, the target value of the torsional rigidity of the frame was determined in the test run, and the conditions of analysis were also developed to be able to measure the compartment of the frame which concerns the actual driving conditions of the vehicle. Additionally focusing on the dynamic conditions of the vehicle, special devices for the frame were employed.

The following is the improvement of the frame of the 2008 year’s model from past models.

2. Frame design

2. 1 Analysis

The frame is a space frame structure made by steel pipes (STKM). To calculate the torsional rigidity of the frame, the “beam analysis tool” in the PTC Mechanica was used.

Lines between points in the 3D space (shown in Fig.1) can be treated as steel tubes by this tool, and this has the advantage that analysis time becomes shorter than that of normal FEM analysis.

The effect of end compartments of the frame (for example, bulkhead) in the actual driving conditions of the vehicle are considered small.

So in the analysis, points of applying the loads were located on the centre of front wheels, and constraints were located on the centre of rear wheels to be able to measure the influence of the wheel base length and the compartment of the frame which concerns the actual driving conditions of the vehicle.