Aeroshell Architecture Decision

Pros

• Suspension isn’t exposed to air

• Don’t need to worry about wheel covers

• Can try out the umich wacko thingy

  • For this we would have to have a good way of getting a mold of our wheels made + attaching it together + attaching it to the upright

• We know how this works

• Worse aerodynamically, since it increase the width of the bottom shell dramatically bc turning radius of wheels

Cons

• More aerodynamic

• Don’t have to worry about wheel cutouts on bottom shell

• Get to design functional wheel covers

  • More, easier components to practice cfd and this is something new members could most probably optimize as it can be worked on detached from the aeroshell

• Have to design functional wheel covers

  • More work

• Suspension is outside of the car

• Have to cut more holes in bottom shell to allow for suspension

Preference

External

Pros

• only need to make one part

• we’ve already made this and we know how

• makes the manufacturing and design process easier since we are comfortable with this

• Reduces weight

  • we don’t need core to the same extent as before

• could help with array cooling

  • vents by putting holes in front of canopy

Cons

• harder to do array cooling

• harder to do our current thought for shell to shell

• look at other solar cars whose top shell and bottom shell don’t align and non of their topshells could be made easily in one piece

• manufacturing becomes twice as long(may be able to optimize slightly so maybe not 2x but longer)

• We haven’t made this design before, so we don’t know the problems

• interaction between our parts always sucks, more parts more sucky interactions

• we have to ask sawyer to machine another foam mold or find a way to do it ourselves

Preference