Purpose
Panels on which the driver and all passengers will step on as well as rest their feet
Ensure that the panel is sturdy enough to within stand the weight of a passenger and will not collapse under those conditions
Lie flush to bottom chassis tubes as well as front/rear seat while not interfering with brake lines or parts for dynamics
Panel Make-Up/Thickness
Desired thickness is 1”, due to chassis tubes having a height of 1”
Must lie flush to chassis tubes
Panel make-up chosen for optimal strength and rigidity to within the loads being applied to it
Carbon Fiber Orientation/Type
Woven CF:
Fibers run in 2 directions
Unidirectional CF:
Fibers run in 1 direction
Carbon Fiber is close to 70x stronger when the force is running in the direction of the fiber when compared to against
Need to understand your forces when choosing which type of CF to use
Carbon Fiber Orientation/Type
Chosen all layers of CF to be woven, due to unpredictability of the applied loads
Driver/passenger footsteps are too unpredictable to account for so it is best to have strength in as many directions as possible
Going to have 90° and 45° offset between layers to increase the amount of directions fibers will run
Pattern: 90° - 45° - 90° - 45° - AF - Nomex - AF - 45° - 90° - 45° - 90°
How Carbon Fiber is Needed (Calculations)
*For the reference* be careful when calculating 45° offset
Always add around 5” more to length and width of final CF calculations to leave room for error
CF in a roll has a roughly 1.5” gap from the edge of the film to the actual CF (something to consider)
Day Of Layup
Prepare vacuum bag and breather cloth to match the size of the respective layup
Ensure that if you are using glass for the layup, you have Loctite applied to the surface the surface of the glass to ensure it the panel doesn’t stick to the glass after curing
Make sure that vacuum bag has enough slack to ensure that the bag doesn’t rip once a vacuum is pulled - can be fixed be creating a pleats (image on right)
Oven/Heater Setup
Use the wood panels to setup a box that is big enough to hold the glass
Ensure that you use the square panel with a square cutout so the heater can be placed there one on each end of the oven
When placing heater into the cutout make sure that the main fire blast doesn’t come in contact with the wood or it might on fire and that’s a big no no
**This oven was for the bottom panel not the floor panel, floor panel oven will be much smaller**