Frame Design: Where: E The Modulus of Elasticity. I The Second Moment of Area For The

The frame is designed to safely house the driver within a steel roll cage during competition. SAE provides requirements for the frame, including material constraints, space limitations, and concepts like center of gravity and ground clearance. Only a few materials like various steels are considered due to cost, machinability, and mechanical properties. The document analyzes the material selection and welding process, focusing on yield strength, modulus of elasticity, density, and cost to optimize the design.

Uploaded by

Srikar Chinmaya

We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.

Available Formats

Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

0% found this document useful (0 votes)

26 views2 pages

Frame Design: Where: E The Modulus of Elasticity. I The Second Moment of Area For The

Uploaded by

Srikar Chinmaya

We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.

Available Formats

Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

You are on page 1/ 2

Frame Design

The purpose of the frame is to create a three dimensional space for the driver to fit within
the steel roll cage while driving the car and still be in a safe environment. SAE provides all
teams with a list of requirements that must be met in order to pass the technical inspection that
the car will be subjected to upon initiation of competition activities. The requirements to be met
range from material constraints to space limitations, making the material and solid model
challenging to design, all of these conditions must be met while keeping in mind off road race
cars concepts such as horsepower to weight ratio, cars center of gravity, ground clearance,
vehicle dynamics, height, width and length amongst many other concepts.
With this head start the material selection was originally made. In off road race car
construction there are only a few common materials used due to factors such as cost, machine
ability, density, hardness and materials properties such as tensile strength and modulus of
elasticity. SAE also provides a list of minimum requirements that must be met for the material,
namely they are the bending stiffness and bending strength that have to be calculated about an
axis that gives the lowest value.
Since the bending stiffness is directly proportional to the EI product of the material and
the bending stiffness of the material is given by equation (#), only those parameters that will
have an effect on the strength and integrity of the frame will be considered for the material
selection of the tubing. Since the weight of the car must also be considered to be a limiting factor
for the material selection as well, the material density will also be compared against the
previously selected materials in order to optimize the selection while keeping in mind the price
of the raw material. The material selection is summarized on table (#) which contains all relevant
information such as yield strength, Youngs modulus of elasticity, material density and cost per
foot for three different types of steel, AISI 1018, AISI 1020 and AISI 4130.
c
S I y Equation (#)
Where:
E = The modulus of elasticity.
I = The second moment of area for the
cross section about the axis giving the
lowest value.
Sy = The yield strength of material in
units of force per unit area.
c = The distance from the neutral axis
to the extreme fiber.
TIG type of welding allows for deeper penetration on the metal when doing this type of
geometry, also the welding process is clean and allows for detailed precision where most needed,
namely on the joints for the front bracing and the rear roll hoop. This type of welding is allowing
for stronger, higher quality welds. However, TIG is comparatively more complex and difficult to
master, and furthermore, it is significantly slower than most other welding techniques.
However for fast rate, cost and from past experience we chose electric arc welding for our frame.

This concept was the one that was used for the 2007 Baja team, it was
analyzed and used as a staring point, and most of the base lines were used from the overall
length, width and height. Since the model was already constructed and it was tested, an
investigation was performed to find ways to shorten the car and to find out ways to correct the
dynamics of the car. Some of the problems that were reported from the previous team were the
following:
1. Car weighted more than 400kgs
2. Overall length more than 105 in (Max .SAE recommended)
3. Small W/L ratio
4. Narrow turning radius
The rules and regulations were carefully reviewed in order to understand the scope of the
roll cage, then an initial draft was drawn in order to capture all of the requirements prescribed by
the competition

This model has many advantages as described below:

1. Shorter in length and height while making it wider for better stability
2. Designed for manufacturability
3. Limited number of welds makes manufacturing easier and faster
4. Structural integrity kept to the highest degree by keeping shorter and uncut
members by creating bents or reinforcing bracing.
Utc Design report
The frame design incorporated bends instead of miters in many of the structural members, believing that
this allowed for faster construction, and increased material strength from cold working resulting in an
overall increase in product quality. Although there was added cost associated with out-sourcing tube
bending, this cost was offset by a reduction in fabrication man hours through decreasing the amount of
mitered and welded joints and eliminating man hours and material needed to fabricate fixtures for fit-up.