Redimensionamento vertical da suspensão e desenvolvimento de um mecanismo de acoplamento de barra estabilizadora aplicado ao protótipo mini baja

Abstract

The Baja SAE project is an extension project created for the college students and organized by the SAE all over the world. The project provides to the students the improvement of their technical skills and the possibility to practice the knowledge acquired in the classroom. During the Baja SAE competition, the student is challenged to develop an off-road vehicle, which must fulfill a list of technical specifications that make the prototype able to participate in the competition. One of the projects involved in the vehicle development is the suspension and steering. Being aware of that, one of the responsible components to ensure better performance to the prototype is the antiroll bar, which is directly related to the pilot comfort and the cornering performance. While the use of the anti-roll bar provides better lateral performance, it adds more stiffness to the system, harming the prototype vertical performance and consequently the driver comfort. The present work has as objective the redesign of the suspension vertical dynamic and the design of a new anti-roll bar that has a coupling mechanism. Being able to couple the anti-roll bar during cornering and uncouple it during the travel through the obstacles provides performance and comfort to the vehicle. The development of this project has used the current vehicle of Equipe Imperador to acquire data, followed by the design of the components, the virtual modelling, the dynamic analysis, the FEA, and the manufacturing. To finish the project, tests were performed with the proposed solution to validate the designed parameters and the developed system effectiveness. The results acquired with the project converged to the designed parameters. The coupling mechanism was manufactured and proved to be useful at the tests performed, allowing the driver to choose if he will use or not the anti-roll bar while driving the vehicle.