Design of powertrain of an off-road racing vehicle

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to design the powertrain system of an off-road racing vehicle, in accordance with the performance targets. Powertrain of a vehicle describes the flow of power from its generation on the throttle to the driving of the wheels. This includes the engine, transmission, drive-shafts, differentials, and the final drive. Over the entire process software such as SolidWorks, Ansys and MATLAB have been extensively used, to conduct simulation studies ranging from Static Structural, Thermal, Modal Analysis etc. The initial process in the study was the selection of components in the vehicle, based on which calculations were done to compute the exact specifications of the components to be designed. To ensure accuracy, and simplicity for calculation of parameters in subsequent iterations, a MATLAB model was created. Relevant simulations of all the components were conducted on Ansys to reduce chances of failure and to achieve the desired results. A virtual Powertrain model on MATLAB with input parameters from the Suspension and Braking subsystems was also setup to obtain real time characteristic values of the vehicle, in the form of graphs, which can later be analyzed to improve the vehicle performance.