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Over the last five years the Vandal Hybrid Racing team at the University of Idaho has developed a compact, lightweight, and mass centralized vehicle design with a rule-based energy management system. Major areas of innovation are a close fitting frame design made possible by the location of major components and engine modifications to improve performance. The innovative design features include a custom designed engine, battery pack and simplistic hybrid coupling system. The vehicle also incorporates a trailing link suspension, and realization of a rule-based Energy Management System (EMS) which determines the power split of the combustion and electric systems. The EMS oversees the operation of the Lynch electric motor and the YZ250F engine that is housed in a custom crankcase. The battery pack can initially store 2 MJ of energy in a single 50 lb. lithium polymer battery pack that is located underneath the cockpit.

This paper details a multiyear effort at the University of Idaho to develop a very compact powertrain that results in a lower center of gravity and smaller pitch and yaw inertia for a single-seat open-wheeled hybrid competition vehicle. This design entails introducing torque from the electric motor to the countershaft of a Yamaha YZ250F engine, allowing torque multiplication via the transmission and thus to the final drive and wheels. Maximum motor speed into the countershaft corresponds to maximum speed of the engine. The repackaged powertrain features a D135RAG Lynch electric motor connected to a customized countershaft that is housed in a machined aluminum case that includes Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) engine and transmission internals. This case also incorporates a Torsen differential with an in-house designed planetary gear reduction.

Frame design and optimization is a difficult subject for inexperienced designers to grasp. In the application of the Formula SAE® car frame, it is the largest and most complex single component in the system. The structure must meet competition rules and regulations while remaining lightweight, rigid, and must act as the central mounting bracket for all other systems and components. The design of the frame is dissolved into a procedure that includes research, modeling, optimization, and testing. Each step in the procedure is further broken down to a set of actions that may be performed to accomplish that stage of the frame design. This work is presented as an abstract method of frame design - a guide versus an instruction manual. Therefore, results are not numeric or concrete. The data presented is an example of how the University of Idaho chose to measure candidate frame designs.