Abstract
Design of a Planetary Gear Box for an FSAE Electric Racecar:
This paper presents the development and experimental validation of a planetary gearbox prototype designed for integration into a Formula SAE electric racecar hub motor drivetrain. A structured design process encompassing concept selection, analytical modeling, and iterative refinement yielded a single-stage compound planetary gear, selected for its optimal balance of weight, performance, manufacturability, and reliability.
Comprehensive analysis of all critical components, including gears, shafts, carriers, bearings, and casing confirmed adequate strength and fatigue life over a 750-mile service duration, with acceptable safety factors across all major failure modes. Experimental validation of the assembled prototype demonstrated compliance with all primary performance specifications, including a total mass of 8.14 lb, a minimum torque capacity of 21.2 Nm, correct gear ratio, smooth high-speed operation, and IP65 environmental sealing.
These results confirm that the prototype performs as intended and that the analytical models employed throughout the design process are reliable. Limitations of the current prototype include the absence of case-hardened gears and assembly challenges arising from planet gear tooth count selection. Future work should incorporate industry-standard gear manufacturing processes such as hobbing and surface hardening, conduct extended testing under realistic thermal and cyclic loading conditions, and address full system integration including motor cooling, upright refinement, and topology-optimized structures. Taken together, this work establishes a validated foundation for the adoption of a hub motor drivetrain architecture within Virginia Motorsports and demonstrates the feasibility of a compact, lightweight, high-performance planetary gearbox within Formula SAE constraints.
An Analysis of the Decline of American Manufacturing Through Technological Determinism:
This paper employs soft technological determinism to argue that the rise of computing in the latter half of the 20th century drove not only an economic restructuring of the American labor market, but an ideological one as well, reframing blue-collar manufacturing as low-status, expendable labor and precipitating a decline in American manufacturing capacity that persists today.
While the economic dimensions of this decline, particularly globalization and wage competition, have been extensively studied, the cultural and ideological mechanisms through which computing reshaped American values around work have received comparatively little attention. Using the soft variant of technological determinism, which acknowledges the primacy of technology as a driver of societal change while allowing for the influence of other factors, this paper traces how the widespread adoption of computers gave rise to a new class of knowledge workers whose cognitive, credential-based labor became culturally synonymous with intelligence and skill. Simultaneously, manufacturing work was recast as vulnerable, low-skill, and replaceable. This ideological hierarchy manifested in measurable institutional consequences, most notably the systematic defunding and stigmatization of vocational education, the collapse of the skilled workforce pipeline, and a growing mismatch between available manufacturing jobs and qualified applicants.
The American semiconductor industry is examined as a case study illustrating how this ideology led the country to abandon the very manufacturing expertise now considered critical to national and economic security. Counterarguments rooted in globalization and the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework are addressed. The paper concludes by drawing a parallel to the current moment, cautioning that the unchecked rise of AI risks reproducing the same ideological errors.
