JMU Shell Eco-marathon fuel-efficient vehicle

The Shell Eco-marathon is one of the world’s leading student engineering competitions, where STEM students from across the globe design, build and operate some of the world’s most energy-efficient vehicles.

Our project entails delivering a fuel-efficient vehicle characterized by design decisions made through analytical software such as, SolidWorks and Matlab/Simulink. The vehicle was split in 4 sub-teams: chassis, drivetrain, engine tuning, and model development/simulations.

The vehicle was intended to be raced in the Sonoma Raceway in California for the year 2021. However, due to the pandemic, a virtual environment was taken for the competition and testing was performed at a local raceway to test the vehicle for fuel-efficiency and road performance.

This project ultimately has helped all of us get an understanding of model-based engineering and the value it brings to us and future JMU Supermileage teams! I have been working extensively as a project manager, each team’s tasks, and also programming our electronic fuel injected system for optimal performance in different operating conditions.

Overall.

  • What

    Building a fuel-efficient vehicle from scratch for the annual Shell Eco-marathon competition as to achieve maximum fuel-efficiency and technical innovation.

  • How

    Building SolidWorks models of the chassis to conduct Finite Element Analysis (FEA) as to view safety of vehicle. Developing a mathematical model through Matlab and Simulink as to simulate the car around a raceway and develop a racing strategy.

  • Results

    Fuel-efficient vehicle constructed with technical innovations of a custom throttle body assembly and machined gearbox. Achieved a fuel-efficiency of 216 MPGs and awarded the safety award by The Shell Company.

JMU Supermileage

Roundabout the silver bullet

Machined fuel-efficient vehicle with design specifications gathered from SolidWorks and Matlab/Simulink’s mathematical model. Safety features include nose cone as a crumple zone, firewall, driver shield, driver harness, kill switch, fire extinguisher, and firewall. The drivetrain includes an adapted clutch and custom machined gearbox. A Ryobi 4 stroke engine was used and patched with an ECO-Fi ECU and fuel-injection kit which was tuned for maximum fuel-efficiency e.g. achieving 216 MPGs on road.