Structural Design
This section walks through the structural analysis of the design. A detailed FSI - Fluid Structure Integrated Simulation was done to include aerodynamic forces in addition to the existing loading on the chassis of the pod. While this was not entirely accurate due to the complexity of the chassis design which required a detailed set up in ANSYS, this gave us fair idea of how much weight we could add on safely on the chassis.
The chassis was designed in way keeping the manufacturing process in mind. The whole chassis could be laid out flat on a sheet of aluminum, waterjet cut into required parts and then welded to get the whole structure. A miniature chassis was cut out on wood first to get an idea of potential problems like tolerance fit etc, that could be faced when cutting the aluminum one. To see the actual manufactured chassis, you can view the Manufacturing subpage.
