RC Car
(Spring 2020)
This was my school project for Machine Elements (ME 338). Given an RC motor, battery, controller, transceiver, and servo motor, the objective of the project was to design and build an RC car that met a few given requirements: survive an impact with a wall, turn the radius of a specified circle track, and withstand the fatigue of one race.
Due to COVID, the scope of the project changed to exclude manufacturing, but I made sure to design it to be manufacturable. The flat plate that serves as the base of the car was to be cut via waterjet out of a 6061 aluminum plate. The wheels were to be machined on a lathe out of low durometer (78A) skateboard wheels. The impact absorber that lines the perimeter of the body was to be cut out of expanded polyurethane foam (this foam had material properties sufficient to make impacts survivable). The rest of the components were to be 3D-printed out of ABS plastic.
The driveshaft and the rear wheel hubs were validated in static and fatigue FEA simulations where the motor applies a torque that stresses the drivetrain components.
Loads, fixtures, and mesh for FEA simulation of driveshaft.
Loads, fixtures, and mesh for FEA simulation of wheel hub.
Resolved displacement from FEA simulation.
Resolved displacement from FEA simulation.
Von Mises stress from FEA simulation.
Von Mises stress from FEA simulation.
Life cycle plot from fatigue FEA simulation.
S-N curve for ABS plastic used in fatigue FEA simulation.