SAE baja at Olin College: Phoenix Racing
About the Team
Phoenix racing is a student-run project team at Olin College. We compete in the intercollegiate Baja SAE design series, which involves designing, building, testing, and racing an off-road vehicle (like the one seen above, which we built my sophomore year). We are an education-oriented team which provides members with long-term experience in an extensive, hands-on engineering project. All students are encouraged to contribute to all aspects of team activities, from design to competition. More information about the team can be found on our website: www.olinbaja.com.
My contributions:
Freshman year
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My freshman year, I designed a platform with three other students—which we call “the testrig”—for the testing and tuning of a newly purchased component: the Gaged GX-9. The GX-9 is a tunable continuously variable transmission (CVT). The idea of this system was to simulate the acceleration of the car using a large flywheel, and allow us to send the CVT through its shifting motion without needing to actually drive the car. My specific role in the project was initially to design the platform itself: a frame of steel tubes with adjustable engine mounting points and static shaft positions. This involved a lot of SolidWorks design using primarily 3d sketches and weldments, as well as analysis using the built-in finite element analysis software to ensure for the safety of the operator of the test rig itself. By the end of the first semester however, we had successfully completed design and fabrication of the system, where I was the driving force behind cutting, mitering, and drilling all of the frame components of the system. Post-fabrication, I began work tuning the CVT using data from the testrig, and eventually became the team’s resident CVT guru. As such, for the second semester, I used the tool I had built in order to tune our system using concrete data, and developed an integral understanding of the system that allowed me to tune it dynamically at competition.
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Sophomore Year
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My Sophomore year, my responsibilities increased, and I directed all work on the CVT system. In addition to leading the existing tuning efforts (including work using the test rig), this also involved a redesign of our CVT cover, as well as a software simulation of our system in order to further validate our more experimental tuning decisions. Redesigning the CVT cover was a project where I acted as a project manager with a team of two freshmen, designing a modular system that allowed us to remove and service the drivetrain of our system much faster, while retaining structural integrity. All of this design was again done with SolidWorks, and I assisted in fabricating using water jet and bent sheet steel. With the simulation software, I worked alongside two other mechanical engineers, doing mathematical analysis and MATLAB calculations in order to create a software system to simulate the effects of more adventurous tuning decisions, such as designing our own replacement components within the CVT.
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Junior Year
As a Junior, I led operations on the drivetrain subsystem as a whole. This involved everything from daily design work to long-term administration and people management.
My first major job as the drivetrain subsystem lead was a complete redesign of the system as a whole, including a move from the use of chains to gears within our transmission system, the design and fabrication of a custom spool, and the shift to a single-level drivetrain orientation. These changes served to reduce the size, lower the center of gravity, and improve the efficiency of our car as a whole, while also reducing costs incurred by the team.
Besides overseeing design, I also led my subsystem as a mentor and teacher by leading design reviews, lecturing on continuously variable transmissions, and instructing students in the use of modeling, simulation, and analysis within our work. Under my direction, my team compiled a design portfolio full of decisions and documentation about changes we made to the baja car across the year in order to help future baja teams make their own decisions in the future.
My first major job as the drivetrain subsystem lead was a complete redesign of the system as a whole, including a move from the use of chains to gears within our transmission system, the design and fabrication of a custom spool, and the shift to a single-level drivetrain orientation. These changes served to reduce the size, lower the center of gravity, and improve the efficiency of our car as a whole, while also reducing costs incurred by the team.
Besides overseeing design, I also led my subsystem as a mentor and teacher by leading design reviews, lecturing on continuously variable transmissions, and instructing students in the use of modeling, simulation, and analysis within our work. Under my direction, my team compiled a design portfolio full of decisions and documentation about changes we made to the baja car across the year in order to help future baja teams make their own decisions in the future.
