This past week CalSol finally got around to testing the strength of the beams and welds that will be used in the next car. Thanks to the help of Scott McCormick and the rest of the guys in Hesse Hall we were able to use an Instron Universal Tester to gather some valuable data on the material properties of the steel we are using to build our next chassis. We are excited to announce that preliminary analysis indicates that the steel is stronger then we initially believed, meaning that CalSol’s next chassis will be even safer. The Chassis Team is extremely excited by these results, as the results will allow us to proceed in constructing the new chassis, but the Team hopes to run more tests in the future to gather more data for further analysis. Click past the break to watch a video of a test.
Here is a video of one of the tests: