Politecnico of Torino Student Team Uses HyperWorks to Reduce Vehicle Weight and Fuel Consumption in Shell Eco Marathon
Technology Category
- Robots - Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGV)
- Sensors - Autonomous Driving Sensors
Applicable Industries
- Aerospace
- Automotive
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Smart Parking
- Vehicle Performance Monitoring
About The Customer
The team H2politO is a group of students from the Politecnico di Torino, with diverse backgrounds and profiles from various engineering disciplines. The team is based in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department (DIMEAS) of Turin’s Politecnico, and led by Prof. Massimiliana Carello. The team’s mission is to shape a new generation of engineers who represent the educational excellence in regard to each of their competencies. The team designs and constructs low-energy consumption vehicles that could become benchmarks for their categories. The team participated in the Shell Eco-marathon Europe with a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle and a hybrid vehicle.
The Challenge
The Shell Eco-marathon (SEM) is a global competition that challenges student teams to design, build, and drive the most energy-efficient car. The team H2politO, a group of students from the Politecnico di Torino, participated in the competition with a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle and a hybrid vehicle. The team aimed to improve their vehicles by reducing frictions and masses to minimize fuel consumption. One of the most critical issues was the wheel rim design. Lighter rims lead to less rotating masses, reducing energy consumption and improving the vehicle's dynamic behavior. The challenge was to optimize the geometry of the wheel rims to determine the ideal structure and mass distribution while considering manufacturing constraints. The team needed to apply sophisticated computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools to support a simulation-driven design process and enable early decision making for further improvements of the vehicles.
The Solution
The H2politO team applied Altair’s HyperWorks suite to design and optimize the wheel rims. The tools enabled them to consider technical constraints such as tire design specifications and constraints related to the chosen manufacturing technology for the rims. The team used an aluminum alloy for the rims due to its lightness and other beneficial material characteristics. To optimize the rim structure, the students used OptiStruct, Altair’s FE solver and optimization tool. They defined the component’s design space, applied loads and other boundary conditions, and conducted an optimization study that simulated the real test for the rims. The resulting mass distribution provided the basis for a detailed CAD model of the rim. The team used static analyses to validate the results.
Operational Impact
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