ISSN: 0974-5823 Vol. 6 No.

3 December, 2021
International Journal of Mechanical Engineering

Design and Development of Formula Student

Electric Drive train

Partheeban K
R.M.K. Engineering College, Kavarapettai

Chandran Saran M
R.M.K. Engineering College, Kavarapettai

Charan A
R.M.K. Engineering College, Kavarapettai

Ezhilarasan K
R.M.K. Engineering College, Kavarapettai

Abstract - Formula Student Competitions are the these skills are to be developed during they are an
competition for undergraduate students. The main goal undergraduate. So, to prove their skills, the formula student
of these competitions is to help the students to develop competition serves as a platform for every enthusiastic
engineering skills in a real-time environment. These engineer.
allow the students to generate concepts, design, fabricate
A. Formula Student Competition
and compete with others. Generally, it will take 6-12
months of designing, fabrication and testing. The best The competitions generally comprise of two sections, they
team is selected not only based on the design and built are Static and Dynamic events. The static event consists of
but also checks the cost, marketability and engineering Cost Submission event, Engineering Design event, Business
involved in it. Plan Presentation and Technical Inspection. The technical
inspection is to ensure the quality, built and safety of the
This document describes the selection of drive train car. The Dynamic events are Acceleration and Brake test,
components, design, analysis, manufacturing and Skid-pad, Auto-cross and Endurance. The team must pass
assembly of the drivetrain system of a formula student the technical inspection to get into the dynamic events.
race car. The drivetrain has designed to be simple, The Cost Submission event tests the cost management,
lightweight, compact and serviceable. Here, the power is purchase of materials for the team. The Engineering Design
delivered from an Agni 119R Electric motor. The event tests the level of engineering involved in the car. The
transmission of power is done by a single fixed ratio Business Plan Presentation helps to prove the marketability
chain drive. A limited-slip differential and set of equal skills of the team.
size axles are used to transfer the power from the The Acceleration and Brake test, Skid-pad, Autocross test
transmission system to the wheels. Further, the analysis the performance and handling of the car individually. The
methods, manufacturing process and the final assembly Endurance is the real test for the car and the driver, the car
of the drive train are documented. has to run about 22 km which tests the performance,
handling, efficiency and driver skills altogether. This test
Keywords - Drive train Assembly, Motor mount, holds maximum weightage in scoring points.
Differential mount, Floating plate design.
II SELECTION OF SYSTEMS
1. INTRODUCTION
A. Design Goals
There are some qualities that every engineer must possess in
The drive train design has four major design goals
their engineering career. They should have wide knowledge
in practical engineering, available tools, project  Compact
management, cost management, time management, etc., but  Light-Weight
 Simple Design
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  Serviceable Design  The chain drive is a positive drive
The design is decided to be compact because it occupies less  Has efficiency up to 95%
space. The lightweight design makes the car reduce its  An easy and cheap transmission system
weight which contributes to better handling and  Easily serviceable
performance. The simple design makes the fabrication
process much easier and lowers the cost too. Many teams 2) Electric Motor
when they are thinking about the compactness of the design, The chain drive specifications should be decided based on
they forgot about the serviceability of the system. So, we the motor characteristics (Fig. 1&2). Based on our
decided the serviceability is also the main factor that has to estimation of torque and power [1][2]required we have chosen
be taken care of for the designing phase. the AGNI 119R (PMDC) motor has our drive [3]. The motor
B. Requirements delivers the maximum torque of 64 Nm and a maximum
power of 24 KW.
As a first step, we have to list the requirements for a The transmission ratio is 3.34 and to achieve that the chain
drivetrain system to design it. The following requirements drive contains 15 teeth in pinion and 50 teeth in wheel
are the major factors that influenced the design of a sprockets. The chain used here is 528 chains. It must be
drivetrain system. noted that a higher the pitch of the chain can carry more
1)Functional Requirements load [4]and lower the pitch of the chain can give you more
speed.
 The drivetrain power transmission should be highly
efficient.
 The drivetrain should improve the acceleration and
handling.
 The differential should provide better handling.
 The half shafts should prevent torque steer.
2) Fabrication Requirements
 The parts of the drivetrain to be of lightweight and
cheap.
 The machine time should be low and should not
require any specialized or costly tools to fabricate Fig. 1
the parts. Speed (RPM) vs Torque (Nm) Characteristics
 It should be done through readily available
materials and processes.
3) Assembling Requirements
 The transmission system and differential are to be
integrated compactly.
 The drivetrain system should be easily serviceable.
4) Safety Requirements
 All the rotating parts should be covered properly
with non-perforated plates.
 Cases and guards should not contain any sharp
edges. Fig. 2
 All the lubrication requiring parts should be Efficiency graph
properly sealed.
The selection of chain here is optimized between the speed
C. Transmission System
and torque that the motor delivers to the car [5][6].
1) Chain Drive
D. Differential
A single fixed ratio chain drive is selected without any
The differential is a component in the drivetrain system that
gearbox. Since it is an electric motor, torque and speed can
allows the inner wheel and outer wheel to rotate at different
be easily variable. This reduces the cost and weight of the
speeds and avoids the slip of the car. This allows the car to
car. At the same time, the chain drive can transmit power
have better handling during cornering[7][8]. There are many
with fewer losses during the transmission system.
types of differential namely,
A chain drive is selected for the transmission system for the
 Open differential
following key factors.
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International Journal of Mechanical Engineering
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  Limited slip differential The front part (Fig. 3) holds the motor on the front side and
 Locking differential the rear part (Fig. 4) holds the motor on the rear side, in
The limited-slip differential QDF7ZR from Quaife is other words, the motor is sandwiched between two mounts
selected due to the following key factors and does not allow the motor to move or shake in any of the
 Automatic torque biasing unit direction.
 Since it is a single packed unit. There is no need B. Differential Mount
for any special casing required for differential
which reduces the cost The differential is supported on either side with the mount
 The delivery time is quicker than the locking (Fig. 5). That will be connected to the frame of the car using
differential types and comparatively, the cost is bolted joints.
lower than the locking type.
It also to be remembered that the limited-slip differential
provides better handling than the open type differential.
E. Drive Axle
The Constant Velocity (CV) axles are selected due to
 Provides better handling
 Have high efficiency
The CV axles are equal in size to avoid torque steer and the Fig. 5
weight distribution of the differential is also easy. Differential Mount

III DESIGN The differential fixed with the mount with the help of
RLS12 bearings and allow the differential to rotate.
The design of the drivetrain starts with positioning of the
motor and connecting it with a transmission system [9]. C. Chain Sprockets
A. Motor Mount The sprocket with 15 teeth (Fig. 6) is going to sit in the
motor shaft and the wheel sprocket of 50 teeth is going to sit
The motor is in a cylindrical shape that can easily mount
in the differential [10].
over a flat surface. So, the mount which supports its shape is
The pinion sprocket requires the features of key slots and
designed. It does not provide rigid support to the motor as
through-hole to fix in the motor shaft.
well as it also gives an aesthetic appeal. To support the
motor and as per the designgoal, it makesit more
serviceable.

Fig. 6
Pinion Sprocket

Fig. 3
Motor mount (front part)
To decrease the weight of the wheel sprocket (Fig. 7) the
cut-outs have been given, which removes some material in
the sprocket.

Fig. 4
Motor mount (rear part)
Fig. 7
Wheel Sprocket

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International Journal of Mechanical Engineering
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 IV MANUFACTURING
D. Drive Axle Once the analysis phase is completed and got the desired
The drive axles contain a tripod joint at the ends of the shaft results, the fabrication of parts can be done. The differential
which allows the transmission of power even at an inclined mount is fabricated using Aluminium 6061 [13]. This
angle. The diameter of the shaft is calculated based on the aluminium alloy costs comparatively lower than other
amount of torque that is going to transmit from the aluminium alloys and it is proven that it can withstand the
differential to the wheels and the factor of safety. Here a load from the analysis reports. If some higher aluminium
22mm solid steel shaft is used and the tripod joints are filled alloys are used to fabricate, it involves more cost but it
with moly-based grease to increase the efficiency of axles. offers less weight than aluminium 6061. Hence a trade-off
There are also some other joints like Ball joint, Rzeppa between the cost, weight and strength helps you to decide
joint, Weiss joints, etc., to transmit torque at variable angles. the suitable material.
E. Analysis The motor mount is fabricated using the 5mm thick MS
Once the design has been concluded the model has to be plate which is very easy to get the shape of our design. The
testified with the practical objectives. laser cutting process [14]is a bit high to produce but you can
get the shape of your design precisely with cuts and curves.
The ring enclosed in the rear part of the mount can be done
through the rolling process and weld it to the rear mount
plate.
The sprockets either you can fabricate entirely from mild
steel, aluminium, etc., or can use the sprockets that are
readily available in the markets, and a machining process
can be done on it to fix it in our system. It is also
Fig. 8 recommended to give some coatings on the sprockets which
Analysis of Differential mount will avoid rusting and lower the chances of damages to the
tooth.
To do that, ANSYS software provides us to check whether
our designed model will fit in that system or had to be V ASSEMBLY
modified. ANSYS results give accurate results in
A. Motor Assembly
comparison with other analysis platforms. ANSYS gives
accurate results of stress, strain, total deformation, etc [11]. Finally, the front motor mount is bolted with the motor and
the ends of the mount are welded to the frame of the car.
The rear mount only holds the motor at the backside, the
motor sits into that ring on the rear mount. But the rear
mount is not welded to the frame, instead, it is bolted to the
clamps. These clamps are welded to the frame. Hence, the
motor can be easily serviced. The pinion sprocket is
tightened on the motor shaft (Fig. 11).
Fig. 9
Analysis of Motor mount (rear)

The analysis involves the differential mount (Fig. 8) and

motor mounts (Fig. 9&10) under Structural analysis. To get
accurate results fine meshing is done on the mounts. Fig. 8
shows the analysis of differential mount showing stress
variations on it [12].Similarly, Fig.9&10 shows the motor
mount stress variation.

Fig. 11
Motor Assembly

Fig. 10
Analysis of Motor mount (front)

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International Journal of Mechanical Engineering
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B. Differential Assembly serviceability of the drivetrain system. The efficiency [15]of
the drivetrain is about 91%.
Efficiency of chain drive – 0.95
Efficiency of roller bearings –0.99 (2 bearings)
Efficiency of drive axle – 0.99 (2 drive axles)
Total Efficiency = 0.95x0.99x0.99x0.99x0.99 = 0.91
This drivetrain design in fact started with the concept of
floating plate design (Fig.15) where many teams
implemented it successfully.

Fig. 12
Differential Assembly

The differential is first fitted with the wheel sprocket using

bolts and nuts. Then either side of the differential is fixed
with the differential mounts. These are fixed to the frame of
the car using clamps that are welded in the frame (Fig. 12)
C. Final Assembly
The final assembly (Fig. 13&14) of the drivetrain is very
Fig. 15
simple, which is the motor assembly has to fit in the inner Floating plate design (reference)
side of the frame and the differential assembly is fitted outer
side of the frame.
Therefore, can establish a transmission system from motor
to differential by connecting a chain. Further, the axles carry
the power from the differential to the wheels. The inner CV
joint is fitted inside the differential and the outer CV joint at
the wheels.

Fig. 16
Final Drivetrain Design

But the main disadvantage of that design is that the

complex design and the huge cost and time involved in it. If
the team is at beginner level then it will be more crucial
Fig. 13 design for them. The Hexagonal plate (Fig 15) in the
Final Assembly floating plate design is replicated in the frame of the car
itself (Fig 16). Hence, the individual fabrication of the
floating plate is not required. This saves the huge cost and
[Link], our drivetrain design serves as an alternative
for the floating plate design concept(Fig. 16) especially
maintains the same level of compactness and a simple
design for electric formula student car.
REFERENCES
[1] Prof Rupesh S Patil, Rahul S Bharambe, Vaibhav Y Pawar,
Shubham Sugandhi, Kiran S Thakare “Analysis of Electric
Vehicle Drivetrain” – International Research Journal of
Fig. 14 Engineering and Technology Vol. 5 04,2018
Final Assembly with the frame
[2] Saurabh Chauhan “Motor Torque Calculation for Electric
VI CONCLUSION Vehicle” – International Journal of Scientific and Technology
Research Vol. 4 08,2015
This drivetrain design is one of the simplest designs,
compact, lightweight and without compromising the

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International Journal of Mechanical Engineering
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 [3] M Barham “Design and Development of Electrical Systems in
an Electric Formula SAE Race Car” University of Canterbury,
Christchurch 17
[4] M Ravi Teja Reddy, C Sai Virinchy, T S A Suryakumari
“Design and Analysis of Chain drive for differentmaterials and
load conditions” – Journal of Chemical and Pharmaceutical
Sciences 0974-2115
[5] Thomas Galbraith “Design and development of powertrain
elements in a formula SAE electric car” University of
Canterburg Motorsport 25-29, 2019
[6] Ryan T Harty “The design and testing of a high performance
formula SAE powertrain” University of Akron
[7] Tony Scelfo “Light weight torsen style limited slip differential
and rear driveline package for formula SAE” MIT 06, 2006
[8] Brain Wanek “Design of a formula SAE electric powertrain”
MIT 06, 2017
[9] “Formula SAE design” Dalhousie University
[10] Bridjesh P, Vinayak J, Teja N, Madhu S “Design of chain
Differential for a race car” – International Journal of Chemtech
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[11] Alex Reynolds, Ken Angeliu, Tyler Moser, Bryan Martins
“Design and optimization of FSAE vehicle” 04, 2015
[12] Tom Bakker “Design of a drivetrain for FS race car”
[13] “Machining of Aluminium and Aluminium alloys” ASM
handbook Vol. 16: Machining 761-804
[14] Francis Briand, Alexander V Zaitsev “Fundamentals of CO2
and fiber laser cutting of steel plates with high speed
visualization technique” 26((4)): 04, 2004
[15] Aleksey Egorov, Konstantin Kozlov, Vladimir Belogusev “A
method for evaluation of the chain drive efficiency” IIPP
13(2015) 4, 341, 277-282

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