Hemp Aero Kit
Learning Goals
CFD, Aero Design, Project Management
Skills Developed
CAD(SOLIDWORKS, onshape) CFD(SOLIDWORKS, Ansys)
Project Management
Composite Fabrication
Year
Fall 2024
Founder, Project Manager, Designer
Why I started this project: I started this project because I'm interested in aerodynamics, especially pertaining to cars, and neither my school or the automotive project teams at my school offer any opportunities to learn CFD or aerodynamic theory/design.
This project is on going but I reached the end of my first design and fabrication so I will be reflecting on that. Having started this project from scratch in September the first big hurdle was finding people who were interested and willing to dedicate there time. Luckily, I found a handful of people who were also interested in aerodynamics including one person who had access to our school's previous generation formula car which would be come the base for this project.
The design process was also really enjoyable if not quite everything I had hoped it to be. The original goal was to design fully bespoke airfoils in Ansys, but due to a lack of computing power and issues with cross compatibility between Ansys and Solidworks we ended up researching airfoil profiles and integrating them into our design instead. While not the original goal, I think this process of optimizing established airfoils was likely more beneficial to my learning and understanding of aerodynamic design. If it had worked to design our own foils from scratch they likely would have been under-optimized which is where I personally found the most learning to be in the design process.
The fabrication process was almost entirely new to me. I choose to fabricate the front wing as it was the part I designed and I thought it would have the largest effect on the car and offer the most learning opportunities. I won't go to far into this process as it is documented quite well in my YouTube series(linked on the right) on this project but seeing all the work my team and I had put in throughout the semester was extremely gratifying.
Why This Matters to Me: For me, this project is significant for two reasons. Firstly, I enjoy performance vehicles and performance design and believe that both can bring a lot of joy to the people involved. Secondly, I believe that developing automotive technologies through competition is an important part of developing technology for consumer vehicles.
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Why Hemp: I'm interested in hemp because it is significantly safer to work with and has a much lower environmental impact than traditional composite weaves. Hemp composites are less used than their glass and carbon counterparts so I had a bit of a learning curve in fabrication and testing but untimely was quite pleased with how it performed. The weave I had, which was chair upholstery, was a bit to thick to be ideal but with some extra epoxy it was still stiff and strong enough for this case. As this project continues I'd like to do more testing on the material specifically in pursuit of a proper fiberglass substitute.
