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Welcome to the University of Massachusetts Supermileage Vehicle Competition Homepage. A project by the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Both the students and the advisors are very excited about the 2009 Competition. This years team will be working hard to create the most fuel efficient engine and aerodynamic body possible in order to bring home first place. |
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News and Progress January 19th, 2008 New steering parts have been ordered for VV-CF1, and work will begin upon arrival. January 18th, 2008 Maryam called Michelin and they said that they only distribute the tires through JD Powersports.  She emailed JD Powersports and is awaiting a response. She will update the team when more information becomes available. January 15th, 2009 A new Gantt Chart for the new vehicle, titled VV-CF1 has been drafted. January 5th, 2009 Work on the Fund raiser Proposal and Team Report has begun December 16th, 2008 Team, Both vehicles are now registered for the 2009 SAE Supermileage Vehicle Competition and the engines are on their way.  The two teams that we will be racing under are team "Homewrecker" and team "Vroom Vroom Carbon Fiber One". Don't forget out next meeting on January 5th. I'll be sending out an email with the time and location (most likely 6:30 at Rafters, for the sake of consistency). I hope everyone's excited! -Matthew Jarrett December 11th, 2008 Dear Team, I have a suggestion for the new vehicle's name. The possible name that I thought of for the new vehicle is Miles. What I like about this name is that it signifies our goal of gaining more mileage and it's a real name, a name one might give to their child. In many ways the super mileage vehicle is like a child, it requires most of our time and energy, we are constantly thinking about ways to better it's future, it's problems frustrate us, it's potential excites us, and ultimately it's our pride and joy. I think the name Miles would be a great name for our new SMV baby. December 2nd, 2008 This is just a reminder of tomorrow's presentation to Kollmorgen. For those departing from UMass, please meet up at 9:05a.m. at the cage to assist with the loading of the SMV into the trailer. November 2nd, 2008 Halloween (yesterday) was the second "Fiberglass Friday". We finished the second wheel cover and it's expected to come out even better than the first. Today Jacque and I met to fix the fuel door. We used a couple strips of metal to make it conform to the proper curvature and went to Walmart to buy some adhesive. We picked up two different adhesives, an Elmer's product that's exactly like gorilla glue, and a 60 second epoxy. We are trying the Elmer's product first and if that doesn't work, we'll go with the epoxy. We also picked up some organizational supplies. There is a rolling, pull out set of drawers which currently have velcro, tapes, and adhesives in the top drawer, ropes and straps in the second drawer, and the new particle masks in the bottom drawer. There are two large bins next to the set of drawers which contain random raw materials. One bin is for metal and the other is for fabric and plastics. I spent roughly 6 hours cleaning and organizing the SMV cage. I vacuumed the entire floor and began to sort and clearly label different types of materials and products into different boxes. There is a medium-sized collection of things to your right when you enter the cage for which I am unfamiliar with. To be more accurate, however, it is their purpose with which I am unfamiliar. If anyone has any idea, please let me know. I hope to go in there with Anthony or Eric soon to see if they can help fill me in about some of the seemingly random materials which are strewn about. ------------------------------------------------------------------- General Message about the cage: From now on, if you put anything inside the cage - make sure it is organized. If your particular item does not fit in with anything else, give it a new shelf or box and, Most Importantly, >>make sure you label the new shelf or box.<< -------------------------------------------------------------------- October 28th, 2008 Sorry I haven't been able to post very much at all. I don't get the opportunity to use my computer very much and I'm also not at my apartment much. I figured I'd let everyone know that the items on the dyno checklist are dwindling. I made a bracket to mount the fire extinguisher to the wall in the engine room and Miles is going to tack weld it in the a.m. It should be up by tomorrow afternoon. Sean said he was going to talk to AL about the ground strap but I haven't talked to him since to find out how he made out on the matter. Just figured I'd let everyone know that things are looking good for the dyno results provided nothing goes wrong with our engines ( fingers crossed ) October 24, 2008 at 11:52am Today was "Fiberglass Friday" Matt Pappa, Dan M, Pat, and I made the first wheel cover using Matt Pappa's mold. We're hopeful that it will work out well but we're concerned about how difficult it will be to remove it from the mold. If anyone has any suggestions for removal (Matt Pappa waxed it like 4 times before we did the fiberglassing) then let us know! Dan M. continued to work on modeling and analyzing the frame in ANSYS. October 24, 2008 at 11:48am Yesterday (10/23) Jacque and I mended the bulge by mounting two plates on the inside and outside of the bulge and bolting them together. A mirror fell off the car (not sure when) and so Jacque remounted it. Jacque and I then attempted to fit Benna in the car. She does not fit. Her head (with the helmet) is 1" below the roll bar (needs to be 2") and her shoulders are 15" wide, with the roll bar being only 13" wide. The rules state that the "roll protection device" needs to be as wide as the driver's shoulders at or above the driver's shoulders. Possible Solutions: - Different (thinner) helmet - New Roll Bar (Pat's Idea) - Different Driver Pat seems to think that it would be simple and quick enough to make a new roll bar. This would reduce the total amount of weight for the vehicle and will allow for larger drivers to drive the vehicle if necessary. Dan and I began to brainstorm geometry changes and then began to make ProE and Inventor models of the frame to analyze geometry changes in ANSYS. October 23, 2008 at 2:35pm More FEA today. My general approach: I printed a table out of EES with elastic modulus as a function of overall sandwich thickness. I have the bottom, the walls, and the rollbar as separate parts, so all I have been doing is varying the thicknesses of the rollbar and bottom, and then adjusting the material properties to correspond. It looks like the core thickness of the bottom is going to be around half an inch, assuming that the top skin has the same properties as the bottom skin. There are some clear problems with the point where the rollbar meets the walls, so tomorrow I will redesign that and do some more simulations with a differently shaped rollbar. This is also only considering the 250 lbf load on the rollbar. It is possible that everything will change once I take into account the weight and position of vehicle components. October 22, 2008 at 4:36pm I spent a few hours today working on the FEA with Dan McGowan. I decided to model it as an assembly of surfaces, rather than a solid, so I can modify the thickness of the base in ANSYS, rather than having to remodel it in ProE every time. This took a little while, since neither of us had done that before, but we figured it out. Any remaining FEA work should be fairly simple. I am now going to make a table of equivalent elastic moduli versus core thickness for the sandwhich. Tomorrow when I am back on campus all I will have to do is plug these values into ANSYS, and that should tell me what core thickness we need to withstand the safety check. October 21, 2008 at 7:43pm Jose and I conducted an experiment to determine the center of mass for the bottom shell today and it turned out well. To determine the mass center we 1st balanced the shell, longitudinally, using a rope, two clamps, and a level (we also found and marked the center point on the front of the bottom shell). We marked the line along which the shell balanced longitudinally. We then balanced the shell in a different orientation, laterally, and marked the second line along which the shell balanced. The center of mass of the shell was determined to lie at the intersection of these two lines. The center of mass does not physically lie on bottom of the shell itself, but rather lies inside the concavity. We thought it would be best to calculate the center of mass for the driver, firewall, and engine separately. We will then be able to determine the optimal location of these bodies and model them as point loads acting of the bottom shell. The next step is to carry out the experiment we have developed to locate the center of mass of a person, and to calculate the ratio of a person's center of mass to his/her height (due to the different heights of our current possible drivers). October 20, 2008 at 12:48pm Today Jacque and I installed a handle... October 18th, 2008 Maryam, Jacque, Darius, Dan M., Jose, and I all met today for a casual meeting after the Open House (which was a big success) and we had 2 and a half hours of really good communication, casual conversation and brainstorming. One action item produced by this meeting is for me to explain the intention of the facebook group to the team. The intention is not for everyone to constantly be checking the group so that they always know what's going on. It exists so that you're able to check the progress of a given team or a given team member on a process which directly impacts what you're working on. This is why it's important for you to communicate your progress and keep an accurate, daily record. Thanks to those who participated in the meeting today. It was a great team-strengthening experience. October 17, 2008 at 2:52pm On Wednesday, Jose, Joe, Malissa, and I finally went to Vermont Composites. It was really interesting, and we will most likely discuss it in more detail on Monday, but there are a couple big things. After talking to them about the wet layup process, using prepreg tape seems much simpler and less labor-intensive. We are probably going back there to complete the bottom half of the body. We are also most likely going to be using phenolic blocks rather than rails for mounting vehicle components. This means that there will be far less flexibility when it comes to what can go where. Today Jose and I are doing some work in order to decide how thick to make the sandwich core. I think I have the whole ANSYS business figured out. Once we know how thick to make the core, all that is left is to decide where to put the phenolic blocks, and we can finish the bottom half of the body. October 14, 2008 at 2:15pm The dyno computer was not displaying any real numbers so we talked to Al last week and he took the computer on Thursday. The A-D converter was fried so he replaced it and gave it back to us on Friday. On Monday the rest of the engine team was able to get the dyno working properly and they got legitimate results for the new engine. Now the we'll clean the old engine, put it back together, and test it this week. October 9, 2008 at 2:37pm Talked to Rick and miles this week about the best way to make the mount for the new axle. Planning to make a better Pro-E of the mount and then Dan will run it through Ansys. Once the Ansys is done, we will be able to order/buy the material.(hopefully next week, pending 413 miniproject). October 9, 2008 at 2:31pm On Tuesday, Jacque and I sanded down the firewall. The top and bottom of the body now have only about a quarter inch vertical gaps. The bubble is still an issue but Matt Pappa will be attemping to fix that with fiberglass (hopefully soon) We'd like to have the bubble fixed, the wheel covers finished, and the engine remounted by the end of October so that we can test and finalize for the four weeks of November. (especially with Thanksgiving, we're probably going to lose a week of work in November) October 4, 2008 at 10:49am Malissa and I met up today, intending to continue working on the mold. We ended up working primarily on materials research and the FEA analysis for the body. It turns out that the ANSYS work that the team did last year was based on an estimate of material properties for a 0-45-90 laminate, rather than the 0-90 that they ended up going with. It is important that we have some accurate FEA results so we don't end up overdoing it with the body (I want to make sure that we know what the bare minimum is here). We got some results from the CLASS program that Vermont Composites gave Eric, but I am probably going to have to talk to Eric about how exactly they used these values. I am trying to get something out of CLASS that is the same as the material properties in the ANSYS simulations, but I'm not really having any luck with that. Malissa and I also looked around online to see if we could get a better idea of what kind of foams there are to use as core materials for the sandwich laminate. There are surprisingly many varieties of Rohacell foam. At some point I would like to do some FEA of what the body will be like with the actual sandwich there, but I am no kind of ANSYS whiz, and I am not really sure how to go about modeling a part with several different materials in it. In the Composites Handbook, I found some formulas for approximate values for the overall properties of a sandwich composite, which is basically what CLASS does. Unfortunately, even if I calculate the values necessary to treat the sandwich portion as a single, isotropic material, the sides of the shell are still different. If any of you are more familiar with the ins and outs of ANSYS and can give me any help here, I would really appreciate it. October 3, 2008 at 1:20pm There was a meeting with Professor Schmidt today about the gearing. Lots of other team members showed up and we were able to discus progress in other areas as well. We are going to move forward with the general design idea I presented last Monday. We have not yet picked a solid method for pulling the shaft back to disengage; some ideas went around at the meeting we need to sort through. It is also still an option to completely drop the disengaging system for a more simple design. Some testing needs to be done to see if this will be an overall improvement. On Monday we should have some solid numbers worked out as to what the system will need to do. October 3, 2008 at 3:41pm Jacque and I made some further alterations to the body on Friday. We cleaned up the fuel door hinges that were glued to the straight position (which is why it was hinged with duct tape) and shaved more foam out of the rear end of the cover as to allow the top's fiberglass to fit over the bottom part of the body. We took the firewall out and we were going to use the sander to take off some material - but Rick left at 3 oclock for Maine - and shut off the 220v power supply. So that's why it's just kind of sitting in the cage and not in the vehicle. The firewall is responsible for not letting the top of the body mate with the bottom. And that's why were going to take material off of it. We need to discuss whether the (to be) smaller spacing between the top of the body and the bottom of the body will be a drag issue. Which will determine whether or not we actually use the "band-aid". September 27, 2008 at 12:59pm Jacque and I drove to Northampton and purchased a 6 inch wide, 18 foot long Theraband brand latex band to use as a removable, cheap, quick patch for the large gaps that exist between the top and bottom, all around the body. The idea is to wrap the entire band around the body, having it lie where the top meets the bottom, after using Velcro to constrain several specific points of the top to the bottom as to minimize the number of extra-large gaps. We used velcro to mount the right-side mirror to the car and sealed holes in the windshield with hot glue. I wedged myself inside the vehicle and did a visibility test, which seems to be acceptable. For more accurate results, however, we will need a larger area to conduct the test. We have determined that the dimensions of the firewall may be preventing the top from properly mating with the bottom - we will be looking into altering its geometry. On a less serious note we discovered that 18 ft of red theraband will stretch at least the distance between the back of the SMV cage to Rick's desk inside the shop. And that it retracts very quickly when the tension is relieved. And that this is quite entertaining. September 25, 2008 at 3:42pm Today Wassim and I got the engine fully aligned on the Dyno. The engine was running smoothly as well. |
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