NORTHWESTERN FORMULA RACINGAerodynamics Team | Jan 2017 - Jun 2018
Formula SAE is an inter-college engineering design competition organized by the Society of Automotive Engineers in the United States. Student teams design, manufacture and race Formula-style cars that meet certain safety specifications and requirements at organized competitions. Every year, Northwestern students design a cart to compete in this competition. I was a member of the Aerodynamics team for two years, and was in charge of the design and fabrication of the body work of the car. During this time, I personally designed and manufactured the nosecone and closeouts, and assisted in carbon fiber layups and assembly of the air foils. I used advanced surface modeling in SolidWorks, CAM in StarCCM+, used a 3-axis CNC router to machine molds, and performed resin-infused carbon fiber layups to complete these projects.
I used SolidWorks to design the nosecone and closeouts, then created mold boxes for each. The router can only cut material up until a certain height, so I cut the mold into sections that would be put together later. The physical blocks that we would make the molds out of were made up of sheets of MDF, so each section was 5*thickness of the MDF. I used StarCCM+ to add CAM to the molds to be manufactured with a 3-axis CNC router.
Nosecone surface modeling
Moldbox for manufacturing, each slice was a separate piece of MDF that was machined, then all slices were assembled to create the mold
We carved out the mold negatives, glued them together, sanded and cleaned them, then applied a resin coating. We repeated applying resin and sanding to get the smoothest surface possible, then applied a coat of anti-adhesive. The last step was performing a massive carbon fiber layup inside of this giant negative and vacuum sealing the whole thing. We also did layups for the closeouts and airfoils. Finally, we sanded everything down and spray painted for a clean finish.
CNC of nosecone mold
Leading carbon fiber layup
Sanding carbon fiber
Finished bodywork
Painting of the nosecone and closeouts.
