Structural design of solar car body based on solid mechanics analysis of solar panel surface

Abstract

With the increasingly serious problem of global warming and the growing scarcity of energy represented by oil, automobile development has reached a historical tipping point. Nowadays, the most popular solution is to use other clean and sustainable energy to replace current oil and natural gas, thereby addressing both environmental and energy shortage issues. Solar energy, as a "inexhaustible" source of energy, has made significant technological advances over the course of human history. There is, however, a gap in the application of solar energy technology in automotive technology. This paper uses COMSOL software to model the most commonly used solar panels and simulates and studies the streamline distribution, velocity distribution, pressure distribution, and stress distribution of the solar surface under high-speed movement of 90km/h. SoildWorks simulation is used to design a vehicle body structure for future solar cars based on these data. FLUENT software is used to simulate and study the streamline distribution and pressure distribution of the car body at a high speed of 90km/h. Finally, the design's logic and feasibility are validated. The fluids on the surface of a single solar panel and a vehicle body are simulated in this paper. Testing the pressure distribution and stress and strain tests can reveal the rationality and feasibility of the structural design.