Design and manufacture of a self-supporting racing motorcycle seat made on carbon fiber

Abstract

This work presents the design and manufacture of the structural tail (subchassis+seat) of a racing motorbike which has participated in the MotoStudent 2016 edition, held in October 2016 on the Alcañiz circuit, representing the University of Malaga. Two motorcycles were presented, one inside the Petrol category (4 stroke engine and 250 cc) and another one in the Electric category. It is a self-supporting structure that replaces the use of the traditional subchassis and seat, in order to save weight. As a material we selected a 2x2 twill carbon fabric 3K, 200 g/m2 and Resoltech 1070/1074 epoxy resin. The selected manufacturing process has been manual molding and vacuum bag. Taking into account the estimated fiber percentage, the properties of the elemental sheet of composite material have been estimated using micromechanical models. These properties have been implemented in the finite element program Patran-Nastran for the optimization of the part. Once it has been designed, a model of the part has been fabricated on MDF wood which has been used to manufacture the mold of the piece in fiberglass. The designed part was homologated by the organization of the competition. The developed part is 50% lighter that previous solution. The manufactured mold allows to produce more pieces with the consequent cost reduction.