Abstract

Cal State LA Baja SAE is a student-run team that participates yearly in the Baja SAE engineering competition against 100 universities, both national and international. The students design and fabricate an off-road vehicle, then go through static judging and dynamic racing portions of the four day long competition. The static events include a design presentation that is judged by professional engineers and requires the team to validate their design of the vehicle with testing procedures and data acquisition systems. In order to optimize the performance of the vehicle and present validation of the students' engineering design, computer science students have been tasked with mounting electronic sensors to the Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT). Data will be collected from the sensors and analyzed with different CVT configurations to determine the best configuration for each dynamic event. These include acceleration, hill climb, maneuverability, rock crawl/suspension and traction, and a 4 hour long endurance race. Many Baja SAE teams create a custom CVT design or eCVT - a CVT that electronically automates the process that the traditionally mechanical system performs. The data and analyses collected will also be used to build a better understanding of the CVT components so that our team may create a custom system in the future. The senior design students are required to choose sensors that are ideal for measuring the various behaviors of the CVT as required by the Baja team, choose a controller that will read and record sensor data, and create an algorithm for analyzing the data to provide feedback about vehicle performance.

Advisor/Liaison Meeting time:

Fall 2019: Monday 11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Spring 2020: Monday 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Fall 2019 Meeting time:

Monday and Wednesday 3:30 pm - 5:30 pm

Spring 2020 Meeting time:

Monday and Wednesday 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm