week 1
Conducting Research on Impact Attenuators and cheaper alternatives to replace the current FSAE impact attenuator. We have determined what our goals for this porject will be as well as methods for testing. Raj has started work on 3 designs that he believes will be the best replacements for the foam piece that has been used in the past.
week 2
The first design has been finished this is the soda can impact attenuator. By using soda can the price can be kept to a minimum since the most that will be needed to place on the frontbulk head will be 40 cans at 50 cents a piece. Maximum price to use can will be roughly 50$ but that is a significant price drop from the 500$ to use the current model.
Week 3
The trapezoidal and Aluminum Honeycomb design have been finished initial modeling on Solidworks and are about to go into FEA work. FEA stands for Finite Element Analysis. By doing this we can see how the models will react in a crash without having to build them. These designs are adaptations of other ones that we have founds from other schools.
Week 4
After studying the the FSAE rules and regulations there is an alternative to drop testing which is quasi-static testing. We have also got enough cans to build our first model which will be used for testing. We have taken the aluminum honeycomb out of consideration just because we do not have the equipment to fabricate the design that we have planned. Raj and Jon have taken the time to go and sand down the sides of the cans to prepare them for JB-weld which is an epoxy that is super strong and should hold everything together.
we have assembled a second impact attenuator made out of soda cans and have it ready for testing we have filled this one up with expanding foam to see if it will allow it to take in a greater load.
We have completed testing and our designs using the soda cans have failed to reach to minimum requirement for FSAE regulations the filled set reached 1500J and the empty set reached 500J which isnt that bad considering the fact that we only doubled the weight of the cans but had a minimal increase when compared the weight to that of the FSAE temperature.
Conducting Research on Impact Attenuators and cheaper alternatives to replace the current FSAE impact attenuator. We have determined what our goals for this porject will be as well as methods for testing. Raj has started work on 3 designs that he believes will be the best replacements for the foam piece that has been used in the past.
week 2
Week 3
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| Aluminum Honeycomb design |
The trapezoidal and Aluminum Honeycomb design have been finished initial modeling on Solidworks and are about to go into FEA work. FEA stands for Finite Element Analysis. By doing this we can see how the models will react in a crash without having to build them. These designs are adaptations of other ones that we have founds from other schools.
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| Trapezoidal Design |
We are currently trying to find FEA software to use and are in the process of determining what metal to use to make the trapezoidal design we believe we are going to use either aluminum 3003 or 6061 since both of these alloys have low yield strengths.
Week 5
We hit a major road block in terms of FEA software the one that is in the Undergrad labs aparently has liscensing issues and has stopped us from setting up the analysis to justify using the trapezoidal design. We have also learned we may need to find an alternative to a Drop Test since the current machine is down.
week 6
After studying the the FSAE rules and regulations there is an alternative to drop testing which is quasi-static testing. We have also got enough cans to build our first model which will be used for testing. We have taken the aluminum honeycomb out of consideration just because we do not have the equipment to fabricate the design that we have planned. Raj and Jon have taken the time to go and sand down the sides of the cans to prepare them for JB-weld which is an epoxy that is super strong and should hold everything together.
week 7
We are working with an upperclassmen to get LS dyna working we can at least get everything set-up for when we get the liscense to the the LS Dyna post software. However this is is not good because it forces us to take the design out of consideration due to the time constraints.
week 8
we have assembled a second impact attenuator made out of soda cans and have it ready for testing we have filled this one up with expanding foam to see if it will allow it to take in a greater load.
Week 9
We have completed testing and our designs using the soda cans have failed to reach to minimum requirement for FSAE regulations the filled set reached 1500J and the empty set reached 500J which isnt that bad considering the fact that we only doubled the weight of the cans but had a minimal increase when compared the weight to that of the FSAE temperature. 
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