Brown Formula Racing

FSAE Captain - ‘25

I am currently the captain of the Brown Formula Racing team. This experience has been my most complex endeavor by far as I manage a team of 40 undergraduate students in the design, build, and testing process of an FSAE-spec race car from scratch. Over the course of the year, I am in charge of all high level engineering decisions as well as team/project management.

Chassis Subsystem Lead - ‘23 & ‘24

My time as Chassis lead has taught me a lot about the material science of various steels, structural analysis, 3D sketches in Solidworks, and everything there is to know about welding. I’ve welded 3 chassis in my lifetime on FSAE (which is way too many chassis for one person), 2 exhausts, and 1 fuel tank. My most notable achievement as chassis lead was scoring a 21/25 during 2024 FSAE Michigan Design Competition which was one of the highest scores out of all the teams.

Top Skills Used:

  • Solidworks

  • ANSYS FEA

  • Material Analysis

  • Manual Machining

Notable Highlights About My Design

  • Decreased the weight of the chassis by 25lbs while maintaining a stiffness of 1500 Nm/Deg

  • Pioneered the integration of a structural carbon floor to decrease overall weight

ANSYS FEA

  • Torsional Stiffness analysis was done in ANSYS

  • By applying applying opposite loads on the suspension A-Arms, you can find the torsional stiffness from the distance between the A-Arms and the displacement

  • This analysis is done every year to ensure that the chassis’s effect on drivability and tuning is minimal during cornering

Material Analysis

  • Last year, I conducted two material studies to validate our welding and heat treating methods

  • The stress-strain curves show that our in-house annealing process does not make the steel more ductile despite the well known theory that it should. Instead, it makes the material more brittle and prone to failure. We stopped heat treating the chassis because our in-house annealing process is insufficient. This is likely due to our inability to control the rate of cooling without an oven.

  • The Rockwell hardness test was used to analyze the heat affected zone of the weld. Next to the weld is the Heat affected zone which hardens as it cools causing it to be more brittle and have a higher hardness. The dip right at the weld is likely due to the natural gap in the material and the material properties of the filler. The filler we use is ER-70s which is softer and more ductile that 4130 chromoly steel .

Jig Assembly Design

  • Designed a front and rear bay jigging assembly that ensures manufacturing accuracy and mitigates heat distortion of critical hard points

  • Designed and machined a combination of base plates, posts, and angled steel to jig hard points

  • Designed 3D printed jigs for all tubes that do not require tight tolerances

  • All posts, base plates, and angled steel are machined on the manual mill

Machining

  • I have machining capabilities on the manual mill, manual lathe, CNC mill, and CNC lathe

  • I have taken an advance machining class at Brown that is only offered to graduate PHD students and select Brown FSAE students

  • I have machined various parts for the car including chassis jigs, suspension bell cranks, conicals, and other various parts

Welding

  • I have TIG welded steel, stainless steel, aluminum, and titanium