Blog 8

Over the work period of March 23 - April 13, describe your team's project progress and the major milestone achieved by your team.

As discussed in the last Blog update, the team unfortunately fell behind due to the machinist failing to meet the agreed-upon timeline. The team was able to obtain the materials back from the machinist on March 26th and communicated with Jamar to design a new timeline for the retrieval of the uprights. Luckily for us, the design for the rear upright had a fast turnaround time and the team was able to obtain the rear upright on April 2nd and began the validation on the rear upright on April 7th. As of April 7th, the team finished the validation for the weight reduction and the validation for the deflection of the rear upright. 

The team is still awaiting the retrieval of the front upright and will then perform the validation test. As of now, Jamar has given the team an expected retrieval date of the end of the week of April 15th. 

As you come to a close to your project, use your current validation results to support a discussion of your project's overall success at this point and whether your team is satisfied with your achievements.

In regard to the rear upright deflection validation, the team expected lower values. . The FEA model predicted a deflection of about 0.025 mm while the max deflection was 0.5 mm. While this result still falls under our goals of a max deflection of 1 mm, the team has reflected on what could cause this discrepancy. Some of the things that could contribute to the different values obtained are the validation setup fixtures. When the team first tried the experiment, the blocks holding the upright and supporting the jack did not stay in place. The team did add more fixtures to obtain a more solid arrangement and constrained this movement to the best of their abilities. 


Figure 1: Rear Validation Trial Test 

Figure 2: Rear Upright Validation Setup

Figure 3: Fully Fabricated Rear Upright



With the time remaining before the final report, what improvements to your prototype will be made and what remaining validation experiments will be conducted?

Because the team has completed the validation of the rear upright, with the time left before the final report the team is focusing on finishing the validation for the front upright as soon as it is received. The remaining experiments for the front upright include camber angle validation and brake caliper deflection validation. Once the full set of uprights is received (2 front and 2 rear), the team will ensure integration with the adjacent suspension assembly to conclude all validation tests. 



  1. Upload the current draft of your technical poster.

Figure 4: Technical Poster First Draft

 

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