SAE - Live Valve Control Predevelopment
The purpose of this project is to design a control system for a live actuating shock base valve. The purpose of live valving is to change the stiffness of the shock in real time such as stiffening the shocks for a large impact or softening the shocks for articulation of the car. The students on this project will be designing a control system that takes in sensor inputs such as steering, shock position, speed, and IMU, and changing the shock valving to improve the performance of the car. This is a pre-development project meaning most of the testing will be done on a shock dyno and sensor inputs will be controlled manually with sensors or with past data in software. Students doing this project must be interested in how shocks work and how they need to react in order to perform well on obstacles.
This will be the first iteration of this project so lots of research into live valving must be done. The only design aspects of this project will be in hardware and programming. All of the mechanical systems are designed and ready for this project to be attempted.
Objectives
Design:
- Design a microcontroller that can take in sensor inputs and output control signals to the bought live valve part
- Create code that can take in sensor inputs or past data to change the valves position in real time to react to the sensor data
A full capstone report on all term accomplishments, documenting progress.
Testing
- Bench testing - dynamic tests on the shock dyno
- On-car testing at the farm (test track) or parking lot for debugging, reliability testing, and performance optimization if the system is functioning well.
Motivations
The goal of this project is to integrate suspension live controls to allow for better handling of the Baja car to improve maneuverability, durability, and driver handling. This will improve competition performance directly, and will also diversify the team into more electromechanical integration, improving overall knowledge base of the team.
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications:
- Electrical engineers interested in control systems, sensor integration, and coding.
Experience in the minimum qualifications areas, as well as experience with motor control and robotics.
Details
Project Partner:
Logan Misbach
NDA/IPA:No Agreement Required
Number Groups:1
Project Status:Accepting Applicants
Website:https://beaverracing.org/
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YtSzop4who