2022-2023









This year, I made a lot of changes to the way we do things to cut down on time. The amount of time and sweat we put into manufacturing carbon fiber was unsustainable. The car overall has close to 50 individual layups, and each layup ( no mold prep time included ) takes a decent hour.


So I thought what would make this easier, well, fewer layups for sure.

 I redesigned the body to be 5 layups rather than 7, but due to time, the new nosecone was not used.

 Our front wing previously took close to 30 layups, but with the mold redesign and other manufacturing techniques, we brought it down to approximately 9 layups.


Each wing element shown beside is made of 2 layups on separate molds, and are then glued together on foam ribs. 9 elements, 2 layups each, 18 layups plus 4 mid-plates which take 2 layups each gives us 26, endplates, and canards, give us a total of 32 layups for the front wing alone.

Making the wings one piece and combining the mirrored elements into one big mold, the new wing would have the same geometry, but the layups would be as shown beside. 4 different airfoil geometries, and 4 different layups.





In addition to this. Creating one large sandwich core layup and using a CNC router to cut out the shapes allows us to cut out multiple midplates with one layup.

Proof of Concept 3D printed mold

Successful one piece airfoil

Construction of wings with one piece airfoils


Completion of the Front wing

The wing withstood the forces seen in FSAE racecars and even withstood impact after a suspension failure

This huge improvement will also lead to stronger wings by creating them out of one piece of carbon, and performing one layup per wing element, rather than 2, would save a LOT of time combining multiple elements of the same geometry also contributed to the decrease of manufacturing.


 To do this, I did a lot of research on resins that suited my needs and landed on Arkema's Elium thermoplastic resin. This allowed me to perform layups as if I was working with a thermoset resin and then allowed me to thermoform as a thermoplastic resin would.


Using Elium would also make our carbon recyclable which is better for the environment, make the wing more impact resistant, and will allow the body panels to be formed to any new frames.

New molds for Airfoils

This is the prototype design for the new molds, the carbon is laid up in the red orientation and then thermoformed into the blue, leaving the carbon in the shape of the desired wing

One piece airfoil

This is the demolded airfoil for the front wing made with elium resin. Mold geometry showed that other resins such as other thermoset resins would work with the new molds as well

Thermoforming of body panels

In the image above, the body panels can be seen wrapping around the frame itself. This was made possible due to the thermoforming properties of the Elium resin from Arkema and adding in additional area on the body panel molds

To read the paper I did for the FSAE class for a more indepth look on creating the new aero package please see below


FSAE Final Report.docx

Along with the redesign of the molds, a team and I looked into the optimization of the carbon fiber components to reduce cost and redundancy. To do this we made samples to conduct cantilever tests to determine which composition of fibers and resins best suits the requirements of each element. Due to time constraints, general knowlege and past experience was used to determine the composition of each element.


This year I also redesigned the 3D-printed molds for the intake so that they were able to be saved by changing how the molds mated. Again, we had to melt them out due to the infill not being able to withstand us ripping the carbon off the PLA. 

New top intake mold

New intake top mold