Engineering Commons^™

Multilink Suspension & Steering System For Cal Poly Formula Electric, Tristan French, Alissa Roland, Maximilian Sluiter

Mechanical Engineering

The purpose of this project was to design a suspension that would improve the performance of the Cal Poly SAE Formula Electric car around a racing track Performance would be quantified through skidpad, slalom, and straight-line acceleration tests as well as autocross lap times. The approach to meeting the objective was to increase the steady-state lateral acceleration and quicken the transient response while maintaining predictable handling so that the driver could extract maximum performance from the car.

The car uses round-section (motorcycle) tires at a large negative camber angle because the lateral force generated by a pair of negatively-cambered tires …

Formula Hybrid Drivetrain Design, Zachary (Zak) Mcfarland, Alex Pruitt, William Domhart

Mechanical Engineering

The Formula Hybrid senior project group was tasked with designing and building a drivetrain system for the Cal Poly Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Formula Hybrid (FHSAE) team. FHSAE gave customer requirements for performance and geometry for the drivetrain and the FHSAE rulebook has guidelines regarding safety requirements. The team chose to compete in the electric category of the 2012 FHSAE competition. After getting feedback from previous car performance and researching different powertrain options, the senior project team arrived at three conceptual ideas. Using a quality function deployment method, the senior project team chose the concept where two motors independently …