Design of the Uprights Assembly of a Formula Student Prototype

The upright assembly is a key structural element in the wheel assembly of any car, especially in high performance vehicles in which the suspension assembly has a lot of distinct elements. Differently from common passenger cars, in this study the main goal is focused on lowering the weight and maximise the stiffness of the components. Doing so it is possible to increase the overall performances of the vehicle both in terms of longitudinal and lateral accelerations. This study has been carried out on a Formula Student prototype, a 4-Wheel-Drive (4WD) fully electric racing vehicle. In particular the vehicle on which the assembly has been designed is the one of Squadra Corse PoliTO, the racing Team of Politecnico di Torino, in which I had the opportunity to work as a Mechanical Designer in the Unsprung Masses division in the first year and as Team Leader in the second year of my experience. This work aims to provide a tested and reliable workflow to follow when performing the design of a bespoke upright assembly. In particular the main aspects that will be delighted are the Topology Optimization and the Finite Element Method (FEM) Analysis. Of course many other topics will be explained and discussed such as the production method, the material and the after-treatments. Another aspect of study will be a brief fatigue analysis performed using Altair HyperLife. The software used in this study are CATIA V5, Altair Hypermesh and Altair Inspire apart from the obvious Microsoft Office Suite. Comparative analysis have been performed between the solution studied for the 2022 season prototype (SC22), detailed in this work, and the 2021 vehicle (SC21). In particular the two solution have a lot of differences despite being the same assembly of two vehicles which have not be overturned from one year to the next. The results obtained marked a significant improvement in terms of safety factor, especially in critical load cases; instead, from the stiffness point of view, the new solution isn’t impressive also due to the intrinsic properties of the production process adopted. This work highlights a lot of aspects that could be detailed in future studies both strictly related to upright assemblies and to production methods and materials.