In my fourth year on the team I was elected to the position of Team Captain. My Captain duties necessitated I take a step back from the design process and enable the success of the team by removing as many obstacles from the path of the team members as possible. I acted as a liaison to the faculty and sponsors as well as managing the schedule and insuring that nothing on the critical design path fell too far behind.

 

I also acted as a chief engineer, managing the CAD assembly of the car, running assembly FEA's and scheduling design reviews with some of our sponsors. When it came time to construct the car I acted as head of acquisitions, insuring that all supplies arrived on time. I implemented a new system where when stock arrived it was parted off into the necessary sizes, stored with the manufacturing drawings and grouped according to how long creating the part was estimated to take. This approach enabled team members to come into the shop if they had a 2 hour break from class, take a piece of stock and a drawing for a part that was ready to be manufactured and create it without needing to come in for extended periods of time or find shop time that worked for most of the team.

In my third year with the team I was appointed the Chief of Suspension. A role that saw me in charge of a team of four engineers tasked with designing a suspension system that would imbue with car with predictable handling characteristics that enable an inexperienced driver to drive the car with confidence. During testing sessions it was shown that the wheel rate of the car had the highest impact in the driver's sense of predictability for the vehicle. By having the wheel more consistently on the ground and with more consistent loading after hitting a rut or an obstacle tires are able to build up lateral force faster, turning the car into the corner closer to the moment the driver commands it. Once the primary goal for the suspension was set a MATLAB script was created to estimate the wheel loads, making approximations for the unknown characteristics of our tires and the ground conditions of the various races we were attending that year. 

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Once the script was created and validated, via a small testing circuit and strain gauges placed along the suspension linkages, simulated lap time were created for various suspension setups and handling characteristics. This enabled us to place our roll centers and set our steering geometry to values that could help us achieve the fastest laps.

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• Design Goals:         30% reduction in unsprung mass

• Design Methods:    2D topologically optimized uprights and and center lock, aluminum off-road                                       racing wheel for reduction in mass and service time in the event of a failure.

• Achievements:        23% reduction in mass with a 17% reduction in system compliancy

My second year on the baja team saw me as one of the two frame engineers on the team. I was responsible for the optimization, design and assembly of the tubular space frame. The frame is a highly regulated subsystem for driver safety as well as having an extremely large number of interfaces. The frame is the single heaviest component of the car, accounting for nearly 15% of the vehicle mass. It's geometric accuracy is also important, as it affects the fitment of every thing else in the car. In an effort to reduce mass and improve accuracy I decided to move to having the frame tubes bent and cut by an external company, VR3 Engineering. I then created nodal frame jigs that held the frame tubes in place while I tacked them together. Once the whole frame was tacked the jigs were removed and the frame was taken to Direct Dimensions, where it was 3D scanned. Once this "digital twin" was created the incorrect frame nodes were bent to within tolerance, checked again and then fully welded.

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The 2016 season frame was the most accurate and lightest frame that Blue Jay Racing has used, as this manufacturing method and quality checks enables the frame to be made of more continuous tubes, reducing the number of welds and nodes.

• Design Goals:         15% reduction in mass and more accurate assembly of the frame

• Design Methods:     Reduce the number of needed frame tubes via more continuous tubes, quality                                  checks via 3D scanning 

• Achievements:         System mass reduced by 13%     

My first year on Blue Jay Racing was primarily dedicated to learning CAD and manufacturing techniques like Milling, Lathing, how to run a Wire EDM and Welding. When I got more of a grasp on CAD I was tasked with designing the steering rack. I began by talking to the driver of the previous year who told me that the racks in the past were often rather bulky, making a speedy egress difficult, and would pinch the back of your calves. After this I decided to set my target on a rack with a smaller footprint, increased driver safety and reduced mass. 

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This was achieved by analyzing the rack and pinion pair in the system with KISSsoft, a gear analysis software. I also reduced steering effort and steering rack stiffness through the addition of  linear bearings to the ends of the rack tube. This kept the rack more aligned and reduced the bending moment placed on the rack. 

• Design Goals:         10% reduction in system mass and 20% reduction in volume

• Design Methods:     Analysis of meshing pair with KISSsoft and addition of linear bearings to the                                      end of the rack tube to reduce the bending moment.

• Achievements:         System mass reduced by 25% and volume reduced by 18%