Doors Testing/Validation Concepting

Ownership

Research

HINGES

• Must be able to support the weight of the door with no assistance

• Must allow the door to swing open easily

• Must be designed to optimize weight 

• Must allow doors to be operable from both inside and outside the car

Door Design

• lots of stuff here

What are the requirements of our product?

Other things to include are: interesting research, images, links, recap of regulations, etc.

Risk/Unknowns Identification

What are the major technical risks or unknowns associated with this project?

• ensure there is enough clearance between the car door and seats/other features in the interior

• “suicide” style doors open more easily while car is moving due to airflow: latch must be user friendly, and it should be easy to tell when the latch is in its proper position

HINGES

• how are the hinges being mounted?

• design of door cannot make it too heavy,

  • or the hinges won’t be able to handle it.

  • components should aim to be as close to the side with the hinges as possible to reduce (moment? torque?) downwards

  • ensure that weight can be supported when the door is fully open (max moment)

  • get more info from structures about how much weight hinges can handle

• door hinge should be easily taken apart so that door can be taken on and off easily

• range of motion of door should be as large of an angle as possible to allow rapid, easy egress

• if someone inside the car is knocked against the door, it shouldn’t injure them.

  • protruding features on the interior of the door should be avoided as much as possible.

  • if unavoidable, they should be positioned where someone is less likely to hit it

• someone being knocked against the door should not open it

  • opening mechanism should be pull (standard pull handle) not a push button

  • latch should be moving side-to-side, not a push button

• latch mechanism should be useable both in the interior and the exterior of the car?

  • ASC egress regulations, 9.6.B.2

• must not affect safety features (side impact protection, etc) put into place by the structures team

• visibility through windows

  • driver must be able to see 50mm high letters a distance of 3m from the side of the solar car (9.5.B.3)

• potential cup/waterbottle holders → 11.6 specifies that there must be a minimum of 1L of water/fluids per occupant

Prompts for areas of investigation include regulation risks (i.e. headlight brightness doesn’t meet regs), mechanical risks (i.e headlight melting from hight temperature), manufacturing/assembly risks (i.e how does headlight mount to aero body?)

Risk/Unknown Mitigation Concepting

What can we do to mitigate these aforementioned risks/unknowns?