Racing car design using knowledge aided engineering

The evolution of computer aided design (CAD) systems and related technologies has promoted the development of software for the automatic configuration of mechanical systems. This occurred with the introduction of knowledge aided engineering (KAE) systems that enable computers to support the designer during the decision-making process. This paper presents a knowledge-based application that allows the designer to automatically compute and evaluate mass properties of racing cars. The system is constituted by two main components: the computing core, which determines the car model, and the graphic user interface, because of which the system may be used also by nonprogrammers. The computing core creates the model of the car based on a tree structure, which contains all car subsystems (e.g., suspension and chassis). Different part-subpart relationships define the tree model and link an object (e.g., suspension) to its components (e.g., wishbones and wheel). The definition of independent parameters (including design variables) and relationships definition allows the model to configure itself by evaluating all properties related to dimension, position, mass, etc. The graphic user interface allows the end user to interact with the car model by editing independent design parameters. It visualizes the main outputs of the model, which consist in numeric data (mass, center of mass of both the cat and its subsystems) and graphic elements (car and subsystems 3D representation).