The first design of our solar car is almost complete. After months of hard work, our alpha design of the solar car is beginning to come together. We currently have our spaceframe chassis done and CADed up in Solidworks. The chassis is assembled to the suspension components, which include brakes, steering, and the actual suspension system itself. We decided to go with a spaceframe chassis because it is much cheaper than the monocoque chassis option. One design aspect that we focused on was an upright that gives the solar car some ride height instead of being slammed to the ground. After the completion of the full car in Solidworks, we will be testing to see if this ride height is appropriate for aerodynamic efficiency. By the end of this week, we will have a complete assembly of our solar car done. For the mechanical side, everything is added onto the assembly. On the electrical side, the battery box must be added inside the chassis. Upon completion of our alpha model, we can now begin to do testing on the design and see what we can improve on for the beta design. We’ll be doing testing for different materials and different loads on our solar car. The photos shown are photos of the design we currently have.

Stacey Agustin
Solar Car