Challenges
Dynamics of the car, when a rear wheel drive car accelerates forces are directed at the right front and left rear tires. Weight balance will be important, front-back and corner-corner. Any forces used to keep the car from veering off will be wasted and put driver at risk. Test drives are required as part of car registration. The conditions at El Mirage include air at 60ºF, with a density of 0.00237Slugs/ft3. Rolling resistance is important and depends heavily on the conditions at El Mirage. The ground is a hard, dry lakebed. The power required for the car to go 200mph is found by multip
But the car is not the only challenge. Working as a team requires excellent communication. As team members become tired and stressed because of the work this project requires along with a full course load which all of the team members have, it is important not to be affected or effect the other group members as they continue to work. All team members exercised there stamina and communication during the semester.
lying the drive force by the velocity of the car. The drive force is what we are trying to minimize, and is the sum of the drag force and the rolling resistance force. Considerations to drag force is why we chose the body type that we did, and can then be calculated by taking the product of density, coefficient of drag, frontal area, and the velocity squared. We are trying to minimize the drag coefficient and also the frontal area of the car. This is why the study of aerodynamics is important, and why this style of car was built. With the tear drop shape of a streamlined body, the boundary layer flow over the car would hopefully remain laminar and then return to where it was before it was disturbed by the car.
Another major challenge was depending on other people to send us parts. Many part suppliers are middle men for manufactures and don't know what they are selling. We were sent many parts that were not as described and needed to be sent back, or heavily modified to work. Some suppliers would say that the parts were on there way, and that the parts would be in our hands in just a few days. The days would pass, and we would have to call the suppliers back, often our parts would still be in the shipping department waiting to be shipped. This market is very niche and buyers are not usually working on such a tight schedule. We would have to keep our cool while still saying we need our parts NOW!!!!
As we dug deeper into our project we realized that this is a big boys club and that it takes deep pockets to go fast. But we have hard work and charisma on our side. But building on such a small budget and such a short time frame made the project very difficult and stressful at times.
Our access to tools was also a challenge. We were constantly struggling to perform tasks with the wrong tools and more often with broken tools, which takes more time and more effort then working with proper tools. But most important then anything we knew when we were using the wrong tool and stressed safety. We all have all of our fingers and none of us had to go to the hospital.
