New Dynamometer Setup

The goal of this report is to go over the design and implementation of a dyno system for the WashU FSAE team. Utiliing existing infrastrucure and devices from 2008 and 2016 and learning how they work, a new system was designed and implemented. With cost in mind and the fact that the car is dissassembled each year, a water-brake engine dyno was designed, manufactured, and created for the Yamaha R6 engine used by the team. The main limitation of water-brake systems with motorcycle engines is the torque of motorcycle engines is too much for a water-brake due to the transmission being built into the engine: the water-brake attaches to the output of the transmission instead of to the crankshaft. Thus, a gear reduction is needed, a 0.4 gear ratio in this case, to decrease torque and increase speed at the water-brake. With this, many factors had to be added into consideration for the design such as vibrations, shaft misalignment, chain tensioning, engine ease of modification, and more as well as the water-brake support system. While there were some oversights in the design that became apparent as it was being assembled, these challenges were able to be overcome. While the dyno was not up and running before the semester was over, it is 95% complete and should be operational next semester.