Design of a lightweight chassis for the land speed record vehicle Buckeye Bullet 2

Abstract

The design of a novel chassis solution for a land speed record streamliner, the Buckeye Bullet 2, which represents an evolution of the vehicle that recently set various records in the electric vehicle classes is addressed in this paper. Various architectures for a lightweight solution are investigated considered. The reference chassis design of the Buckeye Bullet consists of a steel space frame structure, for which alternative candidate solutions are investigated. These include several combinations of aluminium honeycomb sandwich panels and carbon fibre composite skins and a composite monocoque structure. A high-speed streamliner requires a chassis that is stiff in both torsion and bending, especially in transversal direction, in order to avoid undesired vibrations that can compromise vehicle handling. Thus, the various solutions are compared on the basis of mass, stiffness and eigenfrequencies. Finally, this paper investigates chassis strength with respect to torsional and ending loads that produce critical stresses for the reference structure and for operative loads.