This document details any ideas and design goals that the Aeroshell system is interested in implementing for the 2024-2026 car.

General 

These ideas aim to improve from last year's design.

• Idea/suggestion 
  • How it would be an improvement from last year 
  • Potential drawbacks

• 3 wheel car similar to Tex-Sun — all benefits assuming exposed suspension and aero covers on front two wheels
  
  • Decrease the amount of material we would use (particularly in the bottom shell → Decreasing cost
  • Decreasing weight (particularly in the bottom shell)
  • Should massively decrease cross sectional area which would decrease drag (proportional change I think?)
  • Decreased stability due to only having 3 points of contact
• Nomex honeycomb based topshell rather than Gurit foam core
  • Thinner topshell + the honeycomb shape reduces weight
  • More expensive if we don't have enough Nomex honeycomb

Resolving Prior Issues

These goals are set in place to fix problems that we noticed from last year's design.

• Issue
  • Proposed resolutions
    • Potential drawbacks

• It is difficult to find the location to cut the lip for the top shell, bottom shell, and canopy + cut the holes for the wheels, windshield, lights. This is due to the fact that the canopy has no reference points.
  • Make the angles sharper
  • Make some kind of indent or marking in the molds 
  • Look into going straight from foam to CF, using split mold manufacturing or similar techniques 
• When demolding the bottom shell as well as canopy, we have had issue pulling it out due to the walls of the shell being vertical. 
  
  • Have a draft angle
  • Make a non concave fiberglass mold
• Daybreak's CAD does not have the correct thicknesses for the composites
  • Have the design lead and the manufacturing lead for aeroshell have a talk about what materials they want the car to be made of as well as the amount of ply to use. The manufacturing lead will perform test layups to find the hypothetical thickness of the composite and the design lead will edit the CAD so that it is accurate to the thickness that the manufacturing.
• Currently the top shell and the bottom shell have the same edge, so the top shell edge is only resting on the bottom shell edge.
  • Make a horizontal lip on the bottom shell that goes outwards. The top shell will be wider than the lip on the bottom shell and it will rest on the bottom shell's lip
    • This is most feasible if we do a three wheel car. If we do this if the bottom shell is as wide as it is currently then our car will be way too fat.
    • Top shell may have to be manufactured in two pieces.
    •