Mobility and Vehicle Mechanics

13-29

Authors: Greg Wheatley, Caitlin Campbell , Ben Moore

Our contribution to fulfil the requirements for the mechanical design project was to audit the existing steering components and design an upright assembly for the JCU Motorsports FSAE car. We were required to assess the current status of the project and pick up where the previous team left off. As undergraduate engineers, we have followed the design process outlined in the assessment criteria issued at the commencement of the project. Many hours of work have been put into the design, material selection and loading analysis to come up with what we believe to be the best design given the constraints and timeline. A major guideline governing the design of the upright housing was the need for it to be reliable. This has been heavily factored into the design and is reflected in the analysis of the load cases giving significant room for errors in calculations and accounting for unforeseen circumstances which can cause significant angst for designers unfamiliar with the field. Overall the requirements of this project have been fulfilled to a high standard. We have taken what we have been given and produced a design to be incorporated into the motorsports project.

43-59

Authors: Miroljub Adžić

The paper is concerned with fuel cell and hydrogen technologies and their application in electric vehicles. Beside positive energy balance effects, these technologies can decrease pollutants and carbon dioxide emissions. Fuel cells and hydrogen are quite mature technologies and already used in transportation systems. There are still drawbacks that prevent wider usage of fuel cell and hydrogen: current costs of electrical vehicles, fuel cells and hydrogen, hydrogen storage, very poor hydrogen infrastructure, lack of public awareness that hydrogen is a safe technology, already developed and applied battery technologies and political issues. Regarding the applicability in light vehicles, proton exchange membrane fuel cells together with hydrogen show good performance. It would not be a surprise that in the future hydrogen might affect the geo-strategy concepts based on fossil fuels.