Design and development of the shell of a solar powered car using computer aided design and computational fluid dynamics

• Main Authors: Pantua, Conrad Allan Jay R., Marfori, Isidro Antonio V., III, Gonzaga, Jeremias A.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2016
• Subjects: Solar cars—Design and construction; Computational fluid dynamics; Mechanical Engineering
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/9248
• Institution: De La Salle University

Solar car races are held in some regions around the world with its most prestigious competition, the World Solar Challenge held in Australia. De La Salle University together with a group of sponsors has sent teams that participated in the 2007, 2011 and 2013 editions. With the next race in 2017, active members of the team decided to design a new vehicle capable of competing in the cruiser class for future competitions. The goal is to design and develop a car that complies with the cruiser class technical regulations. The car should be four wheeled, capable of carrying one driver and three passengers and has a solar array area not exceeding 5 square meters. The researchers together with a team of students designed the shape of the car's shell using computer aided design software. The car has to have room for the driver, passengers, mechanical and electrical components. All of these have to be fitted inside the car and this was successfully done after some design iterations. The shell was further optimized for ease of manufacturability and to minimize aerodynamic drag using computational fluid dynamic simulations. During the simulations, the car was able to achieve coefficient of drag (Cd) of 0.28 which is comparable to the coefficient of drag of commercially available sports cars.