Over and Under or around the sides

Post here information about your own engineering projects, including but not limited to building your own car or designing a virtual car through CAD.
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flynfrog
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Joined: 23 Mar 2006, 22:31

Re: Over and Under or around the sides

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Do you still run the CVD? I have a project Im working on that it maybe be useful. Its made for bikes right?

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greenpower dude reloaded
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Joined: 29 Dec 2005, 20:03
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Re: Over and Under or around the sides

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We dropped the CV for the last three races, but would really like to give it another go.

Project sounds interesting...
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flynfrog
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Joined: 23 Mar 2006, 22:31

Re: Over and Under or around the sides

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what were the reasons for dropping it? My project is just a really big bike nothing spectacular.

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greenpower dude reloaded
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Re: Over and Under or around the sides

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I've just had a re-read of this thread, it's really great to see the support you've all extend my way over the past few years. Thank you all very much..

..The fun's not over yet though!

I'm looking at optimising quite a few components ahead of next season and as we won our race I've also been offered some carbon fibre wheels so I'll be redesigning some of the steering set up.

Now... This means that I've got a new analysis tool that i've got to get my head around. I'm running Solidworks at the moment and have played around a little with the Cosmos FEA stuff.

The biggest issue would appear to me to be to actually define how much load it's really likely to be subject to and where it's actually going to bare the brunt of the force.

I'd like to start with the load it's likely to be subject to. If we assume all up weight of the car is 150kg with driver and batteries(not the actual figure but it's nice and easy to work with) and has a traditional 40/60 weight distribution this gives us 60kg for the front end to deal with.

We don't often come across any significant bumps but there are a few surfaces changes and there is no sprung suspension so it does bounce a little. I've just no idea where to begin when it comes to calculating how much strain we could be putting on things.

Any ideas what the known parts of the whole equation need to be?

Sorry Flynn I really need to set up the notifications thingy again.

I don't like reacting too much to what every other team is doing because I kind of feel it often ends up a bit like a knee jerk reaction, which is fine if that change suits your car, but there is every chance it won't.

I like to assess and make informed decisions instead. Most cars this season have gone back to single geared set ups. The advent of new batteries has seen a drop in all up weight of every car by about 18kgs. I think it's this change which has negated the benefit of geared cars. If you're working on something non-competitive I would rate the NuVinci as the best gearbox i've had the pleasure of dealing with. In this application however it's become a bit out of date with the way everything else has moved around it.
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tok-tokkie
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Joined: 08 Jun 2009, 16:21
Location: Cape Town

Re: Over and Under or around the sides

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On some other thread there was a link to a post at FSAE.com. It is something I was hardly aware of but the linked article is very interesting & has generated a lot of discussion. It includes this:
The best few hours work I ever did in this project was to set up a simple lapsim to see how longitudinal and lateral accelerations affect laptimes, (i.e. taking the level 2 vehicle performance outputs, and seeing how they affect level 3 pointscoring). The first lapsim I did was really simple – breaking up an autocross/endurance trackmap into a series of straight lines and circular arcs, assigning appropriate lateral and longitudinal accelerations (assuming constant accel), and then finding laptimes. Change acceleration values, see change in outcome. Although very simple, it was one step up from simple “more power:weight ratio is better” reasoning, and gave some really useful results. For example, according to this simple autocross/endurance lapsim:
- A 10% increase in lateral acceleration gives approximately 8 times the points return of a 10% increase in forward acceleration.
- A 10% increase in lateral acceleration gives approximately 14 times the points return of a 10% increase in braking deceleration
(I have no concern sharing these figures, because people like Pat Clarke or Claude Rouelle aren’t going to believe you unless you can prove it yourself. Or come up with your own lapsims that disprove me. Just do it).
He seems to do the simplest approximation of curves as constant radius & calculating the centripetal acceleration. That would give you the elementary lateral load on your wheel.

There are people here with great technical experience both theretical & practical. I look forward to their responses.

The FSAE thread:http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1256 ... /217101453
I am busy with another project so have just skimmed it. If it is new to you it will iterest you.

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greenpower dude reloaded
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Re: Over and Under or around the sides

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*cough* new sponsorship opportunities *cough*

http://horsfallracing.co.uk/News.html

*cough* More to *cough, cough* follow soon *pulls self together* sorry I've got this terrible winter cough at the moment ;P

Great stuff Tok-Tokkie.
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greenpower dude reloaded
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Re: Over and Under or around the sides

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Hi all!

Not sure this post is strictly allowed so if not I'll quite understand if there are any mods out there that want to remove it.

We're trying to raise some funds for this season, so I've put a few components that we've either never used or just no longer have a use for on eBay. Anyone interested should have a look at http://www.horsfallracing.co.uk/news.html to see what's on offer.

Again, apologies if this post isn't really cricket, but I figured you guys can always take it down if you're not happy.
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flynfrog
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Joined: 23 Mar 2006, 22:31

Re: Over and Under or around the sides

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dang hoping to pick up a CVT :)

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greenpower dude reloaded
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Re: Over and Under or around the sides

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haha! well, this is only round 1 of the garage clear out. Keep 'em peeled! We should have some more stuff over the next few weeks.
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Richard
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Joined: 15 Apr 2009, 14:41
Location: UK

Re: Over and Under or around the sides

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Oh no, please don't mention the cricket after today's shocker!

Anyway, thanks for one of the more interesting threads on this forum, and I do hope the cough clears up.

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greenpower dude reloaded
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Re: Over and Under or around the sides

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Just thought I'd drop you all a quick update.

We ran the car yesterday (as those of you who follow us on twitter will know) at a Test Day down at Goodwood.

We've been working on lots of developments off the car but with our heavily limited working hours have struggled to actually get them rolling so to speak, so we hope to introduce them over the season.

Overall we had a great day of testing, we've been trying to hone our driving ability on rFactor which helped us beat our previous personal lap record of 3.43 with a 3min 42 lap which is an average speed of 38.9mph. The car ran reliably from start to finish which was superb and allowed us to make sure our batteries haven't deteriorated over the winter.

Full day's report due soon. PM me if you'd like to join our quarterly newsletter.
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greenpower dude reloaded
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Re: Over and Under or around the sides

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Heading over to Silverstone tomorrow for our first proper event of the year. It doesn't really count for anything other than pride so we're going along with a view of an extended test. Typically our events are 1.5hours on 4 batteries, and this one is 4 hours on 6 of the same type of battery.

Whilst we have proved we now have a front running car we're going to just take it nice and easy whilst perhaps others will push too hard in what looks to be torrential rain.

As nice as it is to win, now that we've won the national final I kind of feel we have that objective ticked off. There is no doubt that I want to improve our performance but * cliché alert * at the end of the day, you have to step back and think about why we do this. We race in this particular series primarily to learn but also to have fun. If you take one away from the other there is no incentive to continue.

I know that one day I'll find myself as part of a professional outfit and in that situation I'm more than happy to push for victory all the time, in fact, that genuinely is my goal.

Anyway, I didn't just come on here to spill our race strategy :P I came on here to ask about waterproofing. I think we're fairly well covered but it's amazing where water (and presumably air, which can't be good for drag) gets in. We'll tape it all up best we can, but anyone have any particular warnings/suggestions?
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marcush.
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Joined: 09 Mar 2004, 16:55

Re: Over and Under or around the sides

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greenpower dude reloaded wrote:Heading over to Silverstone tomorrow for our first proper event of the year. It doesn't really count for anything other than pride so we're going along with a view of an extended test. Typically our events are 1.5hours on 4 batteries, and this one is 4 hours on 6 of the same type of battery.

Whilst we have proved we now have a front running car we're going to just take it nice and easy whilst perhaps others will push too hard in what looks to be torrential rain.

As nice as it is to win, now that we've won the national final I kind of feel we have that objective ticked off. There is no doubt that I want to improve our performance but * cliché alert * at the end of the day, you have to step back and think about why we do this. We race in this particular series primarily to learn but also to have fun. If you take one away from the other there is no incentive to continue.

I know that one day I'll find myself as part of a professional outfit and in that situation I'm more than happy to push for victory all the time, in fact, that genuinely is my goal.

Anyway, I didn't just come on here to spill our race strategy :P I came on here to ask about waterproofing. I think we're fairly well covered but it's amazing where water (and presumably air, which can't be good for drag) gets in. We'll tape it all up best we can, but anyone have any particular warnings/suggestions?
Waterproof ? nathing is waterproof in the world of automotive and racing.So make sure any water getting in will be forced to go out and not collect where you don´t need it.

A sponge and things to soak up water that does not belong into the machine is always handy..And as you are going to pit anyways for change of battery it might be a good idea to chnage the sponges and mats inside the cocpit which are soked in water after an hour ,,,,

And prepare your kit ..wet conditions easily cause misting of visors or window glass and suddenly you might get a bit distracted 8especially entering the pits under pit stop conditions!) and you might not be able to even see a danger popping up..
Last edited by mx_tifoso on 28 Apr 2012, 12:34, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: fixed post. response was typed within the quoted post.

BreezyRacer
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Joined: 04 Nov 2006, 00:31

Re: Over and Under or around the sides

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greenpower dude reloaded wrote:Heading over to Silverstone tomorrow for our first proper event of the year. It doesn't really count for anything other than pride so we're going along with a view of an extended test. Typically our events are 1.5hours on 4 batteries, and this one is 4 hours on 6 of the same type of battery.

Whilst we have proved we now have a front running car we're going to just take it nice and easy whilst perhaps others will push too hard in what looks to be torrential rain.

As nice as it is to win, now that we've won the national final I kind of feel we have that objective ticked off. There is no doubt that I want to improve our performance but * cliché alert * at the end of the day, you have to step back and think about why we do this. We race in this particular series primarily to learn but also to have fun. If you take one away from the other there is no incentive to continue.

I know that one day I'll find myself as part of a professional outfit and in that situation I'm more than happy to push for victory all the time, in fact, that genuinely is my goal.

Anyway, I didn't just come on here to spill our race strategy :P I came on here to ask about waterproofing. I think we're fairly well covered but it's amazing where water (and presumably air, which can't be good for drag) gets in. We'll tape it all up best we can, but anyone have any particular warnings/suggestions?
This may sound a bit abrupt, but here comes .. winning one big race does not crown you king. Nothing is ever to be presumed. No position above the fray is granted nor is it permanent. The best you can do is to continue to embrace the same efforts and fire that got you the big win every time you take to the track. Good luck!

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greenpower dude reloaded
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Re: Over and Under or around the sides

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I quite agree with you Breezy, It most certainly does not, but you don't want to show your hand in the event that doesn't count - do you? ;)
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