All-digital Design Of Prototype Solar Car

With serious problem of the non-renewable resources consumption, prototype solar car-a kind of new energy vehicles has been increasingly important in the automotive industry of the world nowadays. Because of the fact that non-renewable resources are dying up gradually, it boosts the development of the green-car. The world-famous race-World Solar Challenge attracts the world-renowned colleges and universities, which also boosts the technology enhancement in prototype solar car in the world. Domestic universities such as Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiaotong University have started to develop this kind of solar car since1990s. Due to the lack of accurate theoretical data, experience and achievements on special manufacture, the development speed of this kind of solar car remains slow in China. This paper focused on the all-digital design of the prototype solar car for participating World Solar Challenge, which includes the design of space frame,suspension and body shell. By making full use of the existing data and professional experience in those high-level of solar car teams in the world to finish the task. The contents of the paper mainly include:Firstly, this paper built a database on the frame manufacture with the information from other solar car teams, and designed the CAD model of the prototype solar car frame based on CATIA and meshed FEM of frame in UG NX. The boundary conditions were set and the frame was analyzed according to the typical woking conditions,which often occur when solar car’s serving on the road. The aim of this study was to determine whether the design of the frame is effectively achieved and the possible improvement was proposed, this optimization process would be repeated until a set of parameters optimized for the optimum design of the frame structure was obtained.Secondly, to improve its handling function,stability and comfortability, analysis on two main factors of vibration and noise was performed. The paper anticipated this issue in advance. Modal analysis and harmonic response for the frame were set up in ANSYS. Observing the response characteristics by selecting some key points of the frame, resonant frequency was obtained by analyzing the harmonic response. Then, the cause of vibration and the effects of dynamic characteristics by uneven pavement vibration on the frame was obtained, Finally, this paper produced the frame based on the results of the model optimization.Next, this paper designed the3D model of the prototype solar car body with CATIA. The numerical simulation of car aerodynamic characteristics was later performed after importing the file into the GAMBIT and FLUENT, aiming to simulate the wind tunnel test truly through the analysis to understand the influence of aerodynamic characteristics caused by solar car body, helping to improving body styling in the following stage.Because of particularity in design of prototype solar car structure comparing to traditional automotive, the paper focused on the design of the front and rear suspensions according to the special purpose and offered the new method in designing a suspension named Π suspension.