[KVRC] Khamsin Virtual Racecar Challenge 2016

[RicME85]

All good ideas Richard.

Getting people into the competition and keeping them is a priority IMO.
Every year we have see a fair amount of people sign up but never submit a car or only do so for one or two races.

Chris - how would helping with the competition work if you wanted to participate?

After the wedding (exactly two weeks today) I will have more free time (even though I don't work due to my health it is surprising how much time gets taken up with hospital visits and for the last 12 months planning for the wedding and shopping in preparation)

[MadMatt]

I like the idea to have a mix between sportscar and F1 to attract more people on this F1-oriented forum, but on a personal point of view, I don't like these narrow cockpits. It doesn't represent what a sportscar is, but that's just my opinion.

The idea to have 2 divisions is good, but it needs to be very clear and easy to understand what each means.

An idea also would be that for each round a team is selected to talk about his car, the philosophy behind it, and so on. Make a presentation of its car and his way of thinking. We need more discussions about the cars to be honest. Next season I plan on showing the guys my car in detail and giveaway its "secrets".

This leads to me saying that I wouldn't mind helping the staff and therefore putting me out of the competition if that can help attract more people. Of course I would still compete but without points.

Just my 2 cents for now

[CAEdevice]

I like F1 shaped cars too, but I think that it would be impossibile to manage two different kind of cars in the same challange (or two separate championship).

What we could think about is to allow different design philosophies with a common rule base.

Here is an example (just an example )

A) LMPx cars: the ones that run this year, with small rules improments to improve realism and to make them more similar to real lmp1 cars
B) F1 with covered wheels cars (es. Red Bull X2014): same rules as LMPx but without one or two constraining rule (es. visibility of the front suspensions from the frontal view)
C) LMPx front engined cars: same rules as LMPx cars, but with a different engine/cockpit template

In that way we could have only one rulebook.
To balance the performance in the general chart, we should ask Machin to reduce/increase the engine power (maybe a test car would be needed, I have a clear idea about the loss of performance of a front engined car, and it would not be difficult to estimate the performance of a "B" type car). Maybe, considering "A type" as reference, "B type" should have 50cv less and "C type" 50cv more.

[variante]

I say: let's keep things easy. I like Machin's idea, but we should think about it in 2017. There's still a lot of space for improvements for the current cars, and i'd like to explore it.

The idea of varying engine performance based on the airflow to radiators and engine inlet could be a great improvement for the next season already.

A good compromise would be: external template made of two stages (as today) --> the first one not allowed to intersect bodywork or other templates; the second one allowed to intersect anything we want as long as airflow is granted.

How would we go about judging the requirement on the second template? For example, if there was a full, conic / pyramid shaped shroud enclosing the first template and entering into the second template with only a tiny hole at the front, would this be legal, and if not, how large would the hole need to be before it would be considered legal?

The current regulations already contemplate this kind of judgment:
"There must be a realistic path for flow to reach the inlet. Obstructions or shrouds which limit the flow reaching the inlet in order to reduce drag will be judged to be illegal."
We could easily add some complementary regulations anyway.

[machin]

The idea of varying engine performance based on the airflow to radiators and engine inlet could be a great improvement for the next season already.

My personal opinion is that whilst adding this would add realism... it would also add another level of complication which favors those people who are willing to spend a lot of time iterating their designs.. and that means a bigger difference between the best and worst teams...

With my suggested rule there is no need for additional cfd calculations and also no need for subjective rules regarding what is/isn't blocking the inlets and outlets, since the legality boxes and the inlet/outlet templates can be positioned to ensure that blockage simply isn't possible... this means that as long as your car is legal you don't need to worry about this aspect....

[WillemG]

I've been following this season's challenge from the sidelines and at one point considered entering myself, however a lack of knowledge and available documentation made this infeasible.

I'd like to propose that perhaps for the 2016 season there is a "rookie" championship with slightly simpler rules. However for this be successful I think a starter guide should be introduced to help rookies as most people won't ever have done something like this before.

Additionally if someone from KVRC would like to message me, I might be able to assist in finding a partner/sponsor for the 2016 session.

[MadMatt]

I will help in that matter by explaning the process of designing my car. Machin also did quite a bit of work already on how to design such vehicle.

It is difficult to teach people over internet what they teach during 1 year at a masters degree but people here are always happy to answer questions

[CAEdevice]

I've been following this season's challenge from the sidelines and at one point considered entering myself, however a lack of knowledge and available documentation made this infeasible.

I'd like to propose that perhaps for the 2016 season there is a "rookie" championship with slightly simpler rules. However for this be successful I think a starter guide should be introduced to help rookies as most people won't ever have done something like this before.

Additionally if someone from KVRC would like to message me, I might be able to assist in finding a partner/sponsor for the 2016 session.

Hi WillemG, you can find the cad model of the front engined version of my car on GrabCAD (the link is in the latest pages of the KVRC 2016 thread, or just type CAEdevice on GrabCAD). Not a masters degree but, except for the engine position, it is a detailed example of e 4th/6th place car . I hope it could help.

[machin]

I'd like to propose that perhaps for the 2016 season there is a "rookie" championship with slightly simpler rules.

Would something like my "division B" suggestion be something that would appeal to someone like you? I.e. Where you use a "standard" car for the most part but then design your own front and rear wings and diffuser?

I think it could be a nice way into the championship without throwing people in at the deep end...?

[RicME85]

I think its a great idea, essentially an easier to implement version of what I suggested last year (having a selection of 2 or 3 parts per area of the car that are interchangeable for quick plug and play access for beginners)

[machin]

Yeah, and CAEDevice has made several of his cars freely available to download, so all that is needed is to take one (or similar) and make it the "official" "Customer Car championship" (sounds better than Division B!) chassis... The question of course is whether this will actually increase the number of participants or not.... And I don't know the answer to that...

[CAEdevice]

Yeah, and CAEDevice has made several of his cars freely available to download, so all that is needed is to take one (or similar) and make it the "official" "Customer Car championship" (sounds better than Division B!) chassis... The question of course is whether this will actually increase the number of participants or not.... And I don't know the answer to that...

One of the things that we should tyr to improve is not only the number of partecipants to the first race, but the number of partecipants to the other races.

What about the possibility to assign double (or triple) points to the last race?

[LVDH]

The idea of varying engine performance based on the airflow to radiators and engine inlet could be a great improvement for the next season already.

I totally agree. That would be great.
And it is not that difficult. I once worked on a project improving the air intake system of a race car. I do not want to reveal the true numbers but an increase of engine performance was around 1% for every 1% of reduced pressure drop in the system. Based on that we could figure something out. And I, maybe one or two other people as well, could call their contacts in motorsport and figure out how a better air flow through the radiators translates to increased engine performance. I do not see what would be so complicated after we get these numbers.


This idea of a rookie or LMP2 class is great as well. Here some suggestions from my side.
One or more base cars are supplied. I am happy to build and release on made in blender. Maybe other people could create base cars using different tools.
The LMP2 contenders then only have to create few simple parts that are then added. These could be front and rear wing, side mirrors, end plates and diffuser fences. Non of these are too difficult to create and do affect the performance.
It might also help if these parts were always made public from the winning cars of LMP1. Then everyone or only LMP2 teams could use these parts.

[TalnoRacing]

I like the idea of a "B" or "customer chassis" championship. As a newbie to the competition it takes a huge amount of time to draw a car, run a simulation and then interpret and understand the results. Having no experience or knowledge about aerodynamics means a very inefficient design that takes a lot of time to refine. For the more experienced competitors it might be easy, but these factors always made me cautious of entering.

For added realism in the "A" or "premier" championship (this has to be there if we have a lower category), we could add realism through different engine/cooling templates. Each competitor in this championship can select either a large, high horsepower template requiring a large cooling inlet, outlet and area template, or a smaller, lower horsepower template requiring smaller cooling inlets, outlets and area template.

[machin]

Getting hold of engine de-rate figures based on intake pressure, intake temperature and cooling air flow is not a problem for me as I work in the applications department for a large high performance commercial engine manufacturer....

...but I still worry that it will add additional work for Julien (I'm only guessing; Julien should answer here...) and also that it will deter people from entering the championship as it'll be more difficult to be competitive... So it's a question of realism vs. design freedom vs. accessibility for newcomers... I think you can have any 2 of those variables, but not all 3....

Assuming we go for the two-tier championship then the A-class could have realism and design freedom, whereas the B-Class could have realism and accessibility, at the expense of design freedom...