FEM Modeling and Weight Reduction of a Solar Energy Driven Racing Car Chassis

Abstract

The paper demonstrates the strength analysis of a solar energy driven racing car chassis with two different mechanical modeling, beam-bar and shell modeling. Weight reduction is also a key point in the stages of car design. Reducing the weight of the car results in higher fuel efficiency and usually better dynamical properties. The weight reduction was performed with three different materials, steel, aluminium-alloy and laminated fibre reinforced composites. The paper shows the complete mechanical modeling process from construction of the mechanical model to the analysis of the laminated composite chassis structure and the results of the weight reduction.