Lets ROLL!!

April 2009 - Progress

This was the month when things really started to kick off. Our primary target as of now is the preliminary design report which has to be submitted online by the 15th of June. The preliminary design report needs to contain information about the roll cage of the ATV, including the CAD model and FEA analysis.

One of the first steps taken was to draw rough sketches of our roll cage. We gained ideas from the designs of previous BAJA teams, both US and India, thanks to Google Images :). We created a database of these images and the rollcage team had a brainstorming session discussing the pros and cons of each design. This helped us a great deal in making our own unique design and…..VOILA….we had our own rough design.

Another primary requirement was that the roll cage stick to the dimensional restrictions provided in the rule book. For this purpose, we had one of our potential drivers sit in a comfortable driving position while the others took the necessary measurements. With these as well as other sub-systems in mind, we modified our rough design and created a more or less dimensionally sound drawing on paper.\m/ Now this needed to be recreated in CAD.

The CAD softwares which are available to us are PRO/ENGINEER,CATIA and SolidWorks. CATIA is the primary CAD software chosen as we have atleast one member(Shenoy) who was well versed with it. We are trying to make use of PRO/E and SolidWorks as well, but for the moment we are still in the learning stages. For this purpose we have installed CATIA and SolidWorks in the computer centre. However Shenoy will be unavailable due to internships and so he taught the basics of roll cage design to a few other members of the roll cage team.

Meanwhile the other teams were also busy working on their respective subsystems.
By the end of the month, exams were fast approaching ,so it’s been decided to halt all work by 26th April and to resume after the exams.