Mk. III at competition
I designed the chassis to 1) follow the rules 2) accommodate the suspension 3) accommodate the other subsystems and 4) to be lighter than the previous chassis.
The driver cell (where the driver sits) was extended significantly from the previous year's so the stiffness of the chassis suffered somewhat, but to an acceptable degree. Nonetheless, all the goals were met, though there is always room for improvement.
CAD of the chassis/suspension subsytems
In addition to the chassis, I designed these pushrod/bell crank/shock assemblies.
Front suspension
Rear suspension
Apart from directly designing these parts of the car, I assigned tasks to other members and helped them complete them when needed. For example, I had a member (Bryce Williamson) determine the geometry of the pushrod/bell crank/shock assemblies based on motion ratios we had decided on. We also went through running the FEA of the bell cranks. The a-arms and their tabs were given to another member (Ben Gerber) to design. Later in the process, Kate Margevicius helped touch up the chassis and ensure it was unequivocally rules-compliant.
In addition to managing the chassis/suspension subteam members, I handled the naming conventions and organization of our Solidworks files.
After the 2016 Winter break, I left the team to focus on other things. In the past year and a half or so, the subteam members had grown fully capable of handling the manufacturing and testing phases of the car. They proved this in successfully bringing UCLA's third car to the competition in Lincoln.
