For the past 9 months I’ve been working on building a small formula hybrid car and now that I’m done I wanted to share the results.
The car is designed for the SAE Hybrid competition and is a gas electric hybrid. We used a Ninja 250 motor with a 16 hp sepex motor.
I was the composites lead, and president, for the car and due to the varying requirements there were a number of different layups. The club budget was limited and all the materials used were either donated by me or outside companies.
The most notable composite is the nose cone. It made of two layers of BFG 9.7 oz/yard bidirectional fiberglass. The epoxy was 700 cps clear laminating resin which was also donated. I was supposed to have a professional boat maker donate time with his chopper gun but it eventually fell through. I also tried making the plaster mold using Ultracal but the size of the mold made it a bit difficult with my lack of experience. In the end though the final nose cone ended up looking pretty good when we packed it up in our shipping crate. However when we got to New Hampshire the crate was in bad shape. Turns out the frame shifted inside the crate and smashed the cone.
The body panels were made with 2 layers of vacuum infused fiberglass. I used an infusion resin for this and the battery boxes made by Polymer Composites.
The battery boxes were designed around a 20g requirement. For us that meant each box had to survive 3000 lbf in every lateral direction. The layup for those was 3mm Soric infusion core sandwiched with 2 layers fiberglass. The difference the Soric made in stiffness is astounding.
The last and most important composite is the seat. I’m really proud of this layup since it was the only one I didn’t compromise on. It consists of carbon fiber, kevlar and fiberglass and it was vacuum bagged. The carbon fiber is birectional Toho HTS40. It was very generously donated by Textile Products Inc. The final seat weighed 3.3 lbs and supported my full bodyweight with no visible deflection.
I have to thank Textile Products Inc and Airtech for their donations! Also thanks for the help on these forums as too. I really couldn’t have done this without all the help I got.
Here’s some videos of the vehicle
[ame=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwPOHr651a8”]YouTube - 2011 CPP FHSAE Tilt Test[/ame]
[ame=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsO7YlLrkYU”]YouTube - Brake Test[/ame]
Let me know if you have any questions!
