A Study on Improvement of Road Ability of a Formula SAE Vehicle

This study refers to the dynamic stabilities of pitching and rolling of our manufactured Formula SAE vehicle by numerical analysis and dynamic experiments. Formula SAE Competitions are the events of design and manufacture of the Formula SAE vehicles for university students under the auspices of SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers in U.S.A.). This competition consists of static and dynamic events. The abilities for the engineering design, cost and presentation of the students are judged in the static events. The driving reliability and durability of the competition vehicle are judged in the dynamic events. For the higher winning prize at this competition, it is to get high score in not only the static events but also the dynamic events. The competition vehicle is required excellent acceleration performance, turning performance and durability in the dynamic events^[1],[2],[3]. Therefore, light weight, low center of gravity and a little yaw moment is required for the competition vehicle^{[4],[5],[6],[7]}. The driving course used in the dynamic events consists of many curves and short straights. The racecourse seems to be for gymkhana. Not only the acceleration but also turning performances are more important for the reduction of the lap time in this racecourse^[5]. Furthermore, the vehicle stabilities in acceleration and deceleration are also important^[6],[7]. This study investigated the next items to achieve the above-mentioned purpose. The motions of running vehicles are generally divided into three items; braking, acceleration and turning. The improvement of the mechanical grip by the adoption of the anti-roll bar and anti-geometry is investigated to get higher stability in all of these three items. The investigation was carried out on both of experiments and numerical analysis.