Rakesh Raman.B.B 's blog: BAJA SAE INDIA 2018 - National Institute of Technology Agartala- An Experience of a lifetime

Introduction
Baja Sae India is an inter-college ATV design and evaluation event held every year at Natrax facility, Pithampur, Madya Pradesh. Our college participated for the second time after the previous year. With lessons learnt from our first vehicle, we looked forward to making the best vehicle that we can with the possible facilities.

BAJA 2017 Team Mech Estremo

BAJA 2018 Team Mech Estremo 2.0

Team Formation:

A team of 25 Members comprising of members from 3rd Year and 2nd Year was made by 4th Year seniors through Screening Test and Personal Interview.

Captain- Utkarsh Agarwal; Vice-Captain- Subham Mishra; Technical Head- Shashank Kumar

Suspension Team Head- Vikas Kumar Sharma; Steering Team Head- Rakesh Raman ;

Brakes Team Head- Madhukar Reddy; Transmission Head- Somraj Dasgupta ;

Roll Cage Team Head- Atul Yadav

Driver- Girish Khandelwal; Inventory Head- Satyam Kumar

Virtual Baja 2018:

Virtual Baja took place at Chitkara University, Punjab. A team of 5 members represented Team Mech Estremo- Captain, Vice-Captain, Technical Head, Driver, Department Heads of Brakes and Roll Cage.

We emerged victorious in the Virtual Baja Round with an All India Rank of 71 out of 300 odd-teams from All over India.

Fabrication of the ATV:

We faced a lot of difficulty for starting the fabrication of the vehicle as we didn't have proper machinery. But we never settled, we ordered the necessary equipment, since we are in a remote North-East corner of India, we paid double the amount to get the pipe bending machine on time. We were planning to start the fabrication during Navratri Holidays, but due to delay in delivery, we were only able to start fabrication along the end of the holidays. But still, we fabricated with all our effort and energy, working day and night in our workshop.

The Manual Pipe bending machine is shown in the picture above.

We had ordered components, mostly from Mumbai C2M,

These are the Wheel Rims and Hubs.

Steering Rack

Though we had many fallbacks during fabrication, we were hugely supported by our Faculty Advisor Mr Bhogendro Meitei, Workshop Incharge Dr Subrata Kumar Ghosh B and the M.tech and PhD scholars of our college.

We used important notes from Reference books such as Fundamentals of Vehicle Dynamics by Thomas Gillespie, Tune to win it by Caroll Smith.

For designing Connector for Steering rack and Tie Rod for screw thread measurement and setting in Lathe machine we used Shigley's Mechanical Engineering Design

in SI units and American / British Units.

The Event:

BAJA SAE INDIA 2018 - we reached the event destination Indore few days before the event. We took Hotel Simran near Madhumilan Square, as it was our pickup point.

Then we went on a quest to receive our Vehicle which was shipped from Agartala. We received our Vehicle in Orange Workshop and did our final works there, checked for any shipping defects all over the night.

Then we reached the event destination with our vehicle. We were able to feel the current in the air, the atmosphere rushed adrenaline in our bodies, we did our registration ASAP and took our vehicle to our pit.

We had Cost report, Sales Presentation, Technical Evaluation, Engine Check, Safety Scrutiny events as the static events.

Due to some unforeseen events, we were late and were not able to deliver the Cost report.

Sales Presentation was prepared by Smriti along with Rakesh and Utkarsh. We had done all the calculations and scored a good score.

Technical evaluation judges demanded us to perform Dynamic Analysis using software such as Altair Hyperworks which is free for students and its tutorial is available on its website all for free. We had used mainly Dassault SolidWorks for our design and Analysis, and Ansys for Roll Cage analysis. But they insisted on Dynamic analysis.

We had Positive Steering and X-braking configuration which was wrong, as if one of the brake lines fails, if we had positive steering, it would transmit the feedback force onto the steering wheel ultimately driver losing vehicle's control.

During Engine Check, we found out that our carburettor got clogged. Then we had it cleaned and repaired. Then we passed the engine check.

Safety Scrutiny was the most difficult part of our BAJA journey. They verified our vehicle with every rule in the rulebook. They noted down and listed out our mistakes. Then we took our ATV to our pit and started solving our shortcomings. We sent our teammates to purchase the necessary equipment and tools. We went for shopping on 26 January 2018, Republic Day, it was obvious that we won't be able to find all the necessities of the required quality. Still, our Inventory Head Satyam did a wonderful job along with Prayag and Shashwath. Whereas Azam, Parakh and Prabhanjan helped us in our pit.

Then we went for clearing the Safety Scrutiny but time was almost up and we were not able to lock all the 4 wheels of our vehicle. As the brake hose, we replaced was not up to the required standards, it was not able to transmit the hydraulic force till the brake callipers.

P.S. That brake hose was bought on Republic Day, we made a shop to be opened and it was the only brake hose pipe they had.

We did all that was possible, we did bleeding like 15 times, for 3 hours non-stop, we did it ourselves, got help from others, still we were not able to achieve what was required.

Then our faculty advisor Mr Bhogendro Meitei called it a day, as he realized that all our further efforts don't bear any fruit. then we posed for some pictures.