Traxxas RC Car Redesign
The objective of this project was to recreate a Traxxas RC car chassis in SolidWorks. Our group of four began by disassembling the physical car while documenting and weighing each component. Each part was then individually modeled, assigned appropriate material properties and mass, and organized into subassemblies where necessary. Finally, the individual components and subassemblies were integrated into a complete assembly to recreate the original RC car chassis.
After recreating the original chassis, we expanded the project through structural analysis and design optimization. FEA was performed on the front suspension to simulate a 25 mph impact and evaluate the resulting structural response. We also conducted topology optimization on the front bumper, targeting a 35% mass reduction while comparing the optimized geometry to the original component. In addition, original surface-modeled bodies were designed to fit the chassis, such as the Top Fuel Funny Car body I developed. Finally, we scaled the chassis to 1.5 times its original length and width, requiring the existing geometry and component relationships to be adapted to the larger configurations.