Inventor CO2 CarJack Mangan and Chandler Owen

In the understand phase of the project, we learned the basic requirements and fundamentals of the project. We knew our task was to design and build a car powered by a CO2 canister within specific requirements. We knew that we first had to draw and design our car with measurements listed, to make our design process on Autodesk Inventor easier. After completing the Inventor stage, we had to physically build our car with the end goal of speed in mind.

Understand

To meet our end goal of the fastest car, we had to take specific factors in mind as to meet this goal. Aerodynamics of our car was a big part of this. To increase speed and the quality of our car, the air resistance must interact with our moving body as little as possible, making it effectively aerodynamic. While making blueprints for our car, we kept this idea in mind finally deciding on a slim car to reduce air resistance.

Explore

In defining our requirements, our end goal was clear. We had to produce a car propelled by a CO2 canister within specific measurements that was supposed to go faster than any other group’s cars. To do so we had to account for aerodynamics, weight, and other factors. We had to make blueprints, an autodesk prototype, and finally a test ready model.

Define

In our ideate stage of the project, we made several rough draft drawings of cars we thought would work. By eliminating cars we disliked we came up with a car that we thought would be fastest and would attempt to build. Then, we began drawing our blueprints.

Ideate

After achieving the appropriate model and carving it out of wood, we came up with our prototype. Sanding was done and cuts were made to care for the aerodynamics of the model. We were left with the shape of the body we wanted and needed to add the aesthetics, and the wheels.

Prototype

After achieving our prototype, we then took the final steps to finish our car. We added a layer of paint primer to achieve a glossy coat, before adding a layer of chrome spray paint to make the car more visually appealing. We then used the graphite from pencil lead to act as a lubricant for the wheel axels, then attached the axle and wheels to our finished car.

Refine

Our finished car with wheels weighed a total of 75 grams. Our wheel alignment averaged 1.7 mm off course. For our wheel spin test, each wheel differed in number of seconds spinning. The left front wheel averaged 2.8 seconds, the right front, 3.5, the left back, 5, and the right back wheel lasted 6 seconds. The wind tunnel test measured our drag at 0.102 and 0.11 Newtons, leaving us with an average of 0.1095 Newtons.

Solution

Trial Time (s) Speed (m/s) Speed (km/hr) Speed (miles/hr)

1 1.696 13.33 47.99 29.82

2 1.695 13.33 48.00 29.90

3 1.723 13.12 47.23 29.35

Average 1.705 13.26 47.74 29.69

Solution