Floor Panels

Owned by Michael Hanley
Last updated: Jun 20, 2021
4 min read

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)

Cutouts

It was determined that the 6 individual floor panels that will span the chassis floor is too complex to be cut by hand. To resolve this issue, we plan to make one large panel then use a CNC to cut the shapes of the 6 floor panels. There also need to be cutouts within the 6 panels so interiors can properly mount the seats to the chassis and leave room for the gussets. The image below is a very rough sketch of what the 6 panels look like:

 

Nomex Placement V1

There is no 1” Nomex in the bay that is big enough to cover the entire floor panel layup. We need to break up the Nomex into 3 pieces, ensuring that the cuts in the Nomex do not overlap with one of the 6 panels being cut from the big panel made in the layup process. See picture below to see the placement and measurements for the Nomex.

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**