Design and Analysis of a Tubular Space Frame Chassis of a High Performance Race Car

Formula Student Racing competitions are held at various Formula SAE circuits globally. Students from different colleges worldwide thrive to build a Formula style race car to compete at these events. In lieu to the competition rules and regulations it is important to design the chassis of the car with utmost priority. The major challenge posed is to design and fabricate a light weight car without compromising on the safety of the driver. The car has to be rigidly fabricated at minimal expense. The work in this paper is based on the team NITK Racing’s Car; the DICV NR XIV. This paper showcases various methods of material selection, design optimization techniques and Finite element analysis (FEA) using ANSYS. The basic design is based on the anthropological data of the specified human (95th percentile male) allowing fast ingress and egress from the car. Following the final design selection the static structural analysis of the car was done and the consequent results have been plotted. The entire design and analysis process is based on FSAE 2013 rule book and knowledge of designing and manufacturing yesteryear’s car.