🏆 Best Project 2nd Place

The objective of this project is to design and manufacture a vehicle for entry into the ASME Human-Powered Vehicle Competition.

 

 

Team Members

Shagun Lakhia    Joseph Gubernot    Claudia Rudisill                           

Instructor: Gary Neal

 

Project Poster

Click on any image to enlarge.


Project Video

video player icon

 

Project Summary

Overview

Each year, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) hosts a human-powered vehicle competition. This competition is an engineering design and innovation competition consisting of two components: design and endurance. The main goal of the competition is to design and build a human-powered vehicle that is both safe and efficient. Given that the competition is to be held in the spring, this is a two-part project. The fall team was tasked with designing and manufacturing the frame for the vehicle, as well as developing an innovative component that can be incorporated into the vehicle design.

Objectives

The ASME Human-Powered Vehicle team had multiple objectives that they had to meet in order to be successful. They include:
•Design and manufacture a fully functional recumbent bike frame, with wheels on the ground, that will succeed in the 2023 ASME e-HPV competition in the spring of 2023.
•Create and compile a completed CAD model and design of the vehicle and all its components.
•Develop an innovative design component that can be integrated into the overall vehicle design.

Approach

•To gather the customer needs and their requirements the team decided to meet with their sponsor who broke down the most important aspects of what is most important in the project. The most important customer need was that the vehicle is safe and stable, which has been an issue in the past.
•The concept generation started off with a discussion of whether a two- or three-wheel vehicle meets the customer’s most important needs. The team quickly realized that choosing a tadpole trike design (two wheels in the front and one in the back) would be most efficient. The second thought that went into the concept selection was what material to use. The team opted to use steel rather than aluminum simply because steel is much stronger and will be able to support the weight of the vehicle, driver, and rollover protection cage.
•The team did extensive research on the configuration of a trike before fabricating anything. This ranged from the location of the wheels to the angles at which the spine pieces would need to be cut.
•The team had bi-weekly meetings with their sponsor where they would exchange questions and answers for the proceeding steps of the process.
•The team used Fusion 360 to run Finite Element Analysis to properly measure the length and location of each piece.
•The team used Fusion 360 to create their CAD models. This software allowed the team to simulate a person sitting on the trike to see which locations needed to be strengthened.
•The team fabricated small prototypes to help push them over the finish line. One of the prototypes helped solve the front wheel configuration, along with the turning radius.
•The two tests that were performed on the trike were a weight test and a balance test. For the weight test the team simply sat on the trike to see if the frame could withstand the weight, and it could. The balance test consisted of the team pushing and nudging the bike to see if it would tip over, and it did not tip over.
•The team validated the results by pushing the bike around to see if the front wheels would make sound and established turns around corners.
•From the results the team saw that the project was a success. The trike was able to withstand the weight of a human, stay completely level, and make turns around corners.

Outcomes

•The team was able to design and manufacture a frame that meets the specifications requested by the customer.
•An innovative design utilizing a heartrate sensor to provide the operator with feedback on their heartrate while they operate the vehicle was designed and detailed specifications were written to be handed off to the spring semester.
•A compilation of all CAD designs and documentation was made accessible to the spring semester group to allow a smooth transition and continuation of the project.

–>