Composite design and engineering consultancy DEXET Technologies has entered into a technical partnership with GTO Engineering to develop and engineer the innovative carbon fibre monocoque chassis for its upcoming Squalo production car.
The low-volume, bespoke, £1.38m GTO Engineering Squalo aims to weigh in at under 1,000kg and will be driven by a manual gearbox paired to GTO Engineering’s naturally aspirated, high revving, 460 bhp V12 engine.
To achieve the weight target GTO Engineering will lean on DEXET’s composite and lightweighting experience, derived largely from Formula One and low volume, bespoke production cars, to develop the monocoque chassis from-the-ground-up.
Founder and CEO of DEXET Technologies, Francesco Aglietti said: “The Squalo monocoque chassis and bodywork has construction methods only used in the most prominent of hypercars. These methods are not even employed in the mainstream supercar market, so make no mistake, Squalo is going to be a brand new and unique sportscar. We’re so proud to be a UK-based company working with another prominent British brand to make real strides in composite engineering.”
The fully carbon fibre monocoque chassis and bodywork will be imperative to maintain the design specification weight of sub-1,000kg.
DEXET’s next steps will be to define and freeze the Squalo’s interior specification so the brand-new carbon fibre tub can be designed around known parameters. Although not involved in the manufacture of the recently revealed 3D-printed Squalo buck, the DEXET team will use the buck and work with GTO Engineering to create a perfectly ergonomic interior before finalising the tub structure. Once the interior parameters have been defined, DEXET engineers will analyse the full chassis in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and finite element analysis (FEA) software. CFD enables the user to put a computer-designed model through real-world situations, enabling DEXET to analyse the carbon fibre body shape for efficiency and performance in terms of cooling as well as aerodynamics. The latter software package – FEA – gives DEXET’s engineers the ability to put real-world load cases through the computer-designed chassis to see where its strengths and weaknesses are before investing in a physical prototype, enabling the design to be optimised for strength, stiffness and weight before production.
With unprecedented innovation and new technologies on the horizon, design in the automotive sector is constantly evolving, with effective collaboration between organisations being pivotal to create successful products. This newly announced partnership will bring together aesthetics, functionality and product manufacturability that is in line with up-to-date engineering technology. DEXET will design - from start to finish - the Squalo monocoque chassis, body-in-white and tooling, which features methods and technologies only seen in the ultra-modern hypercar world.