Concept Design and Development of an Electric Go-Kart Chassis for Undergraduate Education in Vehicle Dynamics and Stress Applications

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to a go-kart chassis design, vehicle dynamics calculation, Li-ion battery capacity analysis, and electric motor choice for optimized vehicle performance. The chassis analysis shown in this paper was performed by a CAD/FEA software package, SolidWorks. Three highlights can be found in this paper: 1) an original design was implemented; the basic analysis was composed of chassis optimization using beam elements and modeling such an optimized chassis “locally” with solid elements for sub-modeling purposes. 2) The most stressed tube joint was sub-modeled to calculate the risk of tube wall stability. 3) Vehicle dynamics were calculated for the case of braking in a curved path and the case of a collision with the front tire on road imperfection. The authors intend to install a data acquisition system in the future to analyze the stress of local chassis tubes. The results of the SolidWorks analysis indicate a safety design of the chassis concept. The result for the sub-model stability (buckling) analysis show that the chosen tube wall thickness to diameter gives safety factor values ranging from 1.6 to 5.0. Based on the stress distribution, some improvement in the middle part of the chassis can be made from a half-a-millimeter thicker wall tube, or a larger diameter of the tube, by a few millimeters, to lower the stress. The latter will be described in the following paper.

Mental Workload Analysis of Workers Using the Swedish Occupational Fatigue Index (SOFI) Method at A Job Shop, Sheet Metal, And Pipe Metal Manufacturing Company in Surabaya

“…Especially in the weld joint, which makes the finishing operator bring the product with visible holes and ask the welding operator for a patch [10]; [11]; [12], which can sometimes interfere with work because they have to adjust the level of gas pressure, heat, etc. In addition, another problem is that if the gas cylinder from the welding has run out, the operator must replace it by rotating a tube that is heavy and tall enough to be carried to the empty tube holder and bringing a new tube to be installed in the welding machine [13]; [14]; [15]. The finishing process can be said as the last process of the production line [16]; [17]; [18]; [19], in this process objects or products that have been connected through welding will be ground to make them look smooth and neat and then polished and polished on the final surface according to the customer's requests.…”