Testing

Requirements being Tested

Must be able to sustain 25 mph at full speed
Motor will maintain a temperature below 150F at max load
Deconstruction/Reconstruction of the entire drivetrain will take less than 10 minutes to keep design as simple and as resistant to failure as possible.

Testing Methods

Testing will be done throughout the spring quarter and will be done with multiple trials for each test to ensure that the test results are not skewed by outlying data. Each test will be a simple Pass/Fail with comments for each trial completed.

The speed test is highlighted below and was completed by using a stopwatch and tape. By getting the car up to full speed then taking a time between a set distance, a top speed can easily be calculated.

Speed Testing Discussion

The benchmark for the speed requirement from the beginning was 25 mph, unfortunately our car was unable to reach this benchmark for many reasons.

The calculations initially performed to figure the speed of the car were based off of the correct gear reductions and the specs given from the motor manufacturer. After designing the car and drivetrain the two were merged from both projects. The second belt pulley reduction could not fit in the space given and the second drive reduction was scraped, leaving just the initial spur gear reduction. This put excess strain on the motor since it had to do much more work than originally calculated.

The weight of the car also didn't help the low torque/high speed DC motor and ended up burning up during the competition, DNF (did not finish) was the result.

After the competition a different motor was purchased and was installed resulting in a much faster car off the line and gave us a chance to finish the testing needed on the car. With the new motor installed, the temperature test passed, the assembly test passed, but the speed test unfortunately