Design and Analysis of chassis and suspension of a Land Speed Record vehicle

Chapter 1. Introduction 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Motivation for research From the dawn of time man has strived to go faster. From foot races to roman chariot races, the need to go faster has been with us from the beginning. The automobile has been one of the most revolutionary inventions, improving personal transportation as well as the delivery of goods. It is no doubt that with the introduction of the automobile, mankind has strived to go faster and faster with it. Soon people were no longer pushing standard street cars to their limit, and specialized speed vehicles began to be built. The Ohio State Formula Lightning team has been racing an open wheeled electric vehicle, The Smokin’ Buckeye, since 1994. Not satisfied with the speeds of this vehicle, the team has decided to focus on a purpose built streamlined vehicle called the Buckeye Bullet, designed to break the world land speed record for electric vehicles. The record was break in October 2004, on the Salt Flats of Bonneville, Utah, where the Buckeye Bullet achieve the international Land Speed Record, with a speed of 271.737 MPH. Furthermore, with a peak speed of 321.834 MPH the Buckeye Bullet is actually the faster electric vehicle the man has ever built. Now the team has decided to built a totally new vehicle, powered by fuel cells with again the aim to break the existing Land Speed record. Every speed the vehicle could reach during the record race would be considered as a record, because no fuel cell vehicle has ever participated to the competion, but, clearly, the design objective is not just setting a record, but to built a vehicle that is even faster than the old one. Due to the very high speeds involved, a good understanding of the dynamics of this vehicle is very important 1.2 Scope of thesis research In the moment of the writing of this work the Buckeye Bullet 2 project was just started so the few things were known about the final configuration of the vehicle but several solutions and ideas need to be studied and evaluated, with the purpose of finding the better ones, that are the ones that will