Electro-Pneumatic Paddleshifters
GCU: Gear Control Unit
The expansion chamber to improve the efficiency and stabalize the sudden pressure drop in Co2.
The Electro-pneumatic circuit on test bed
The double acting actuator attached to the gear lever extension
The 12oz Co2 canister
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Electro-Pneumatic Paddle-shifters
I along with three others developed the electro-pneumatic paddle-shifter for the Formula Student India (FSI) cart as our final year project.
Teams generally tamper with their ECU to cut ignition or use throttling for up-shifts and downshifts.The integration of clutch actuation in the system made it highly modular for any bike engine.
The paddle shifters permits the driver to change the gear without taking the hand off the steering wheel giving better control during turns and save seconds consumed in gear changing. The clutch action is controlled by a Arduino which reduces the effort of the driver and saves the space required by the clutch pedal making it ergonomic and further reduces fatigue of the driver.
The integration of expansion chamber increases the efficiency, reduces mass consumption and increase the life of pneumatic components. The full setup weighed around 3kgs and took 150ms for upshifts and 200ms for downshifts. The system could be tailored for use in other sequential gearboxes with little change in Arduino settings and pneumatics pressure.
We also did CFD analysis to optimize the design for best drop in temperature along the length of expansion chamber.