Solar Car Chassis Design and Optimization Using PBL and Design of Experiment

A beneficial project is defined and implemented for the senior project of bachelor students of mechanical engineering program in the school of engineering at American University of The Middle East (AUM). Students need to design, analysis, and optimize a solar car chassis using Design of Experiment (DOE). It is required that the design process and DOE implementation are conducted in 14 weeks based on Problem Based Learning (PBL) method. The main elements of PBL for this project are the ability to understand the project, analyze and resolve problems, and have a teamwork and leadership ability in addition to independent responsibility. The design of the chassis and an analysis of the stress loads are conducted using SolidWorks. Four designs are proposed to obtain an optimum design using DOE and PBL. By optimizing the chassis design, students determined the factor of safety of 10.8 and the weight of 56.4 kg.