Design and Optimization of a Reconfigurable Vehicle Chassis for Shared Use Application

The thesis project outlines the design and analysis of a vehicle chassis for a re-configurable electric car. The project is sponsored by the Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering Education (PACE). PACE is an organization that promotes students putting into practice what they study during their academic engineering formation as undergraduate and graduate students. The goal of this research is to reduce congestion and pollution in the cities by enabling drivers to optimize the configuration of an electrical vehicle specific to a user’s need, for example by allowing the car to be lengthened or shortened to increase or decrease its capacity. The research objectives are to design and perform a structural analysis of a re-configurable car chassis that met design specifications while achieving cost and weight criteria. Existing market solutions will be analyzed to identify design innovations that do not exist in commercial markets