Carbon Fiber Electric Motorcycle:
This is my senior thesis for my BS in mechanical engineering. I undertook the project of designing and building a fully custom carbon fiber electric motorcycle. This includes designing a frame, building a battery pack, building the frame with styrofoam and then strengthening it with carbon fiber & epoxy. As I started finishing up and testing, I realized I had made a few mistakes. Carbon fiber is strong, although the strength is directional. The area where the motor mounted to the frame was weak and would flex during initial testing. I didn't have time to add more carbon fiber and wait for epoxy to dry, so I reinforced the frame with aluminum plating. The second mistake was that the motor should be on the same axis with the swing arm. Since my motor sits slightly above, this means that when the rear shocks compress, the motor to rear sprocket distance changes which causes the chain to skip. The fix I came up with was to get rid of the rear shocks and replace them with aluminum barring, effectively turning the frame into a "hardtail". The last images are of a new v2 frame design which serves to fix these problems.
Senior Thesis:
English.pdf
