Design and Fabrication of CFRP Wheel Centre for FSAE Race-Car

In this work, a Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) Wheel Centre (WC) is designed targeting key parameters such as reduced un-sprung mass and lower rotational inertia in vehicle dynamics. A Keizer Aluminium Wheel Centre was used by the team previously and it weighed around 1.8 Kg. Designing of CFRP Wheel Centre was based on previously used Keizer Aluminium wheel centre considering the design constraints such as distance between hub and wheel assembly. This was done to ensure the same trackwidth within the Formula Student rules. Initially, the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was carried out for the Keizer Aluminium wheel centre and the results were analysed. For the same design CFRP material was used and the result was found out to be promising with a wheel centre weight of 1.3 Kg. Further to improve the performance and weight reduction, FEA was done to design a 38 layered CFRP wheel centre giving utmost priority to ease of manufacturability and safe design. After manufacturing, the CFRP wheel centre weighed 950g and was implemented on PRV17 (Pravega Racing’s FSAE race-car for Season 2017-18) successfully in Formula Student Germany (FSG) 2017 competition. After the successful implementation and testing of the first design, next iteration was carried out on a 24-layer design for PRV18(FSAE race-car for Season 2018-19). This was achieved by varying the angular orientations of the carbon fabric which reduced the mass to 455 g. The second iteration was also successful upon undergoing rigorous rounds of testing on the car and implemented in Formula Student Australasia (FSAE-A) 2018 competition.