DRIVE attended a Scottish formula student track day demonstration at Knockhill, to celebrate Knockhill’s sponsorship of testing facilities for all Scottish formula student teams and a new agreement between the teams. The event gave us the opportunity to have a close look at our rivals and test the car out against the other teams. The new relationship with the teams will help with bulk orders of material, use of testing equipment and driver training.
DRIVE has been joined by new sponsors. Marshall Slingsby Advanced Composites are providing pre impregnated carbon fibre and Racing Batteries has gifted a top-spec lightweight racing battery.
Marshall Slingsby Advanced Composites are a design and manufacture company providing products and solutions for Aerospace, Defence, Mass Transit and Energy Supply industries. They hold many ISO, Civil Aviation Authority and OEM approvals, and work with companies including BAE systems and Rolls Royce. Their expertise is in design and manufacture of composite products and structures.
Racing Batteries are “The most cost effective weight saving money can buy”. They have extensive experience of quality and manufacturing processes in the UK OEM motorcycle industry, this knowledge ensures their products are tough enough to last in racing environments. The new battery is made of LiFePO4 material and weights just under 1kg, a weight saving of 2kgs compared to last year’s battery. It is dry so can be mounted on the car at any angle this is a major advantage for packaging within the car.
We are very pleased to have these sponsors on board; with their support we will achieve our aim of a lighter faster car for 2011.
http://www.marshall-slingsby.com/
http://www.racingbatteries.co.uk/
Team DRIVE have been working hard to complete designs for this years car. Our main aims are to make the new car at least 20kg lighter than the previous car and better performing dynamically.
The driver has been reclined in the car to help lower the centre of gravity which leads to reduced body roll and better handling. The chassis has been thoroughly analysed and refined for optimum stiffness whilst reducing the weight by around 8kg, it will now weigh a mere 29kg. The suspension geometry has been optimised again to reduce body roll as much as possible. The driver controls have been refined to produce a better user interface whilst reducing their size in turn allowing for a more compact and lightweight chassis. The engine will be set up using a fuel injection to reduce fuel consumption and hopefully increase power.
The build of the chassis has commenced and we hope to have the engine running sometime soon. The team are on track for a great result in 2011!!
Dundee University’s Formula Student racing team has achieved success at Silverstone this year. The small team from Dundee, known as DRIVE, were awarded a prize from E.ON for the innovative design of the crumple-zone on their race car at Silverstone last weekend, as well as achieving an impressive third place in the cost competition.
The international Formula Student competition, run by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, sees over 3000 students, several major companies and over 100 teams from 27 countries compete for a top place. Entrants range from teams like ours with only 8 members and a small budget, to heavily funded teams of 40 plus students who compete at many international events.
For the competition students are challenged to design, build, test, market, present and compete as a team with a single seat race car, competing in events ranging from presenting a business case to a panel of judges, to a 23km endurance race. The team finished a respectable 44th out of over 100 entries, and are in a good place to make a stronger return to the competition in 2011.
During the design judging, the judges were overwhelmed with the quality and finish of the car. They were especially impressed with what we had achieved on such a comparatively small budget, and were extremely complimentary of the simple yet effective design. The design was proven on the Sunday, where our car was the fastest on track during the morning of the endurance event, running a clear 6 seconds per lap faster than the rival cars on a short 1 km course
Team Leader, Michael Poller, was delighted with the team’s performance. “All weekend we were met with positive comments about the car, from the scrutineers, the design and cost judges, and from competitors from other teams. Hearing people speak so positively about our car really made all the late nights and headaches worth it. To achieve third place in the cost competition and to win an award for our crash structure was a fantastic achievement for DRIVE.”
University of Dundee students who have developed their own Formula-style racing car have been given the backing of local industrial textiles company Don & Low.
The student DRIVE team are taking part in the Formula Student competition, run by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, which challenges students to design and build a Formula-style racing car.
They will now be supplied with Don & Low’s specialised Armordon(R) self reinforcing polypropylene (srPP) material which the team will use for a variety of parts on their race car. Armordon(R) is a composite material with high impact strength and low density which makes it an ideal material to be used in motor sport and automobile industries. It is 100% recyclable and with no glass reinforcement, there are considerable advantages in both processing and machining.
Alan Wightman, Development Manager for woven fabrics at Don & Low, said “We are delighted to support our nearest centre of academic excellence. Being involved with the DRIVE team represents a good opportunity to get the Armordon brand known to the new generation of mechanical engineers. It has the potential to introduce Armordon into end uses where it does not currently participate. This can be a mutually very beneficial relationship.”
The DRIVE team is based around students in Mechanical Engineering. They have been involved with the Formula Student competition for three years and raced their car in the full competition at Silverstone for the first time in 2009.
“It is a real boost to have Don & Low helping us develop the car to a better level than ever,” said team leader Michael Poller. “We are really aiming to build on our success last year, where we raced for the first time and came a highly respectable 40th out of the 82 teams who competed, many of them operating on a far greater budget than we have.
“For us to improve our car design and performance we really rely on things like support from the local business community. We have had fantastic support already from them, and adding Don & Low to our team is another major step forward.
“Aside from working on the car, it is also great experience for us as students to get this level of involvement with really prominent businesses like Don & Low.”
The students will be heading back to Silverstone in July to test their mettle once again.
Team members Will Rowe, Kenny Sutherland and Douglas Baker-Patch (in car) and Alan Wightman from Don & Low.
Rule restrictions dictate that there is only one throttle restrictor for the engine, so for multi-cylinder cars this means either fuel injection or a single carburettor and a special inlet manifold. The DRIVE team were not able to afford or develop a fuel injection system, so we designed a special inlet manifold for our car.
Working with Simon van de Crommert, 3D Systems Sales Manager - Rapid Manufacturing Systems UK, we perfected our design and 3D Systems built it for us on a Sinterstation(R) SLS machine in combination with DuraForm GF material for best heat resistance.
We could never have fabricated the manifold in our workshop as it was very complicated, so we are very grateful to Simon and 3D Systems for stepping in and helping us over this difficult hurdle.
Simon even drove up to Dundee to make sure that it was delivered on time - Thank you very much Simon.
Simon van de Crommert, Sales Manager - Rapid Manufacturing Systems handing over the manifold to Team Leader Gareth Davies.
Testing the manifold to make sure it fits.
In what must be the sponsorship deal most teams can only dream of, the DRIVE team has joined forces with (if you wil excuse the pun) with the Tayside Safety Camera Partnership to promote safe driving for young people.
As part of the deal TSCP are providing the team with specially printed cones so that the team can mark out courses and practice driving the various FS events.
In return for using the DRIVE team car at displays and events, Tayside Police are providing driver training for our drivers to enable them to perform better at FS events.
On Wednesday 15th July the team made the long journey down to Silverstone to compete in this year’s Formula Student event, and there was no rest when they got there, as work immediately began to prepare the car for the week ahead.
The team had managed to get some testing in before the event so we knew what areas of the car needed to be tweaked and it was soon ready to undergo scrutineering, which took place on the Friday.
Scrutineering consists of five tests; safety, technical, brake, noise and tilt testing. The worst the team had to do to pass safety and technical was change a few bolts on the front end. The noise, brake and tilt tests were all passed at the first attempt.
In addition to preparing the Class 1 car for the dynamic events; the team also had to undergo judging of the Class 1 and Class 3 designs. Class 3 is a design competition where the team show their ideas for a future car, in our case the provisional plans for car 2. This was a steep learning curve for the newer members of the team, but a valuable experience and the team came away full of ideas for 2010.
Competitive events began on Saturday where we participated in the acceleration, skid pan and sprint events. Having only completed scrutineering that morning it was a push to get a time down for each event, but we did it achieving one of the main goals we had set ourselves before the weekend.
Lack of testing showed in the skid pan and sprint events as the less experienced drivers struggled to find the limits of the car. Things picked up in the sprint event when Gareth and Kenny got their turn behind the wheel and began to push the car a bit more.
The highlight of the weekend came on Sunday with an amazing result in the endurance event. The car was named ‘Spirit of Auld Charlie’ after our much loved lecturer Charlie Fraser who passed away earlier this year, and Charlie seemed to be looking after us as the car ploughed on through the terrible conditions to claim 14th place out of the 41 teams who managed to finish.
The engine had given us worries for most of the weekend, refusing to start on a number of occasions, but started 3 times at the first time of asking on Sunday and ran smoothly. The race was stopped at one point and was nearly abandoned due to torrential rain with cars falling off the track everywhere. However in true Scottish style the car loved the rain and finished the event trouble free to spark scenes of celebration. That event left us a highly respectable 40th out of the 82 teams in Class 1, and a good target for next year. The team would like to thank all of our sponsors for helping to make this happen.
