Connor Vaughan

 I am currently serving as Cal Poly Racing FSAE's drivetrain lead as we work to design, build, and test the highest-performing electric vehicle in our club's history, and ultimately win competition. I used NX and ANSYS to redesign and analyze our vehicle drivetrain structure. My design's primary goals were to be light, reliable, and manufacturable. I defined design requirements, designed for manufacturability, learned how to construct a subsystem of many components, sized bolts and bearings, sourced off-the-shelf components, and integrated my design into the overall vehicle build. Drivetrain Structure Assembly I began my design by defining the requirements it had to meet. These designs came from top-level vehicle design and technical direction, reliability/serviceability, testing optionality, and performance targets. Over the 2024 summer, I presented these requirements to my team and alumni in our Design Criteria Review where I provided detailed rationale for each target. I...

As Electric Drivetrain Lead, I developed a longitudinal acceleration simulation using MATLAB to analyze how various vehicle parameters influence straight-line performance and acceleration events for the FSAE competition. This simulation played a key role in selecting critical vehicle components, including the motor for the CP25E vehicle. The simulation took into account a wide range of parameters, such as vehicle mass, weight distribution, wheelbase, final drive ratio, aerodynamic characteristics, motor specifications, and weight transfer effects. The output data included detailed tractive effort plots, maximum speed, 75m track acceleration time, and traction-limited speed, which I used to assess overall vehicle performance. Tractive effort plot output for Emrax 208 Motor and mu = 1.7 Using this simulation tool, I was able to perform sensitivity analyses by sweeping vehicle parameter values to observe their impact on performance. This approach allowed me to identify optimal parameter r...

For the 2023-24 academic year, I led the electric drivetrain cooling management and optimization for the Cal Poly Racing CP24E vehicle. I analyzed the cooling requirements of drivetrain components, constructed a system curve for the previous year's cooling loop, and sourced a new pump that best fit the updated system design while reducing weight by 35%. I also developed a testing plan to measure the head loss within the cooling loop and applied system curve "k" constants to account for the head loss contributions of individual components, enabling precise adjustments to the overall system curve. Final System Curve I began this process by evaluating the cooling requirements for the critical components of the electric drivetrain (the motor and the motor controller): Motor Specifications Model Emrax 228 Cooling Type Liquid (Water) Minimum Coolant Flow Rate 8 L/min Max Coolant Temperature 50℃ Max Allowable Motor Temperature 120℃ Max Motor Temperature Experienced 60℃ Motor Con...

 As a first-year member of Cal Poly Racing, I was tasked with designing cheap, lightweight, and easily manufacturable seats for both the combustion and electric formula vehicles. After discussing desires with drivers and exploring potential options, I decided to make polyurethane foam side bolsters to secure drivers. A set of finished bolsters custom fit to one of our drivers No seat had been used the previous year, and drivers expressed that the main concern they wanted the seat to resolve was excess horizontal movement since the harness already restricted them from lurching forward. Furthermore, they were not concerned with cushioning along their backside as they preferred to sit as low into the vehicle as possible.  Based on these conversations, I decided it would be more effective to create bolsters that hugged the side of the drivers and filled the gap between them and the chassis, rather than create a full seat that would lift them up and require much longer manufacturin...