F1 in Schools Help - basizeland's project

[DaveKillens]

Brett, you seem like a real nice person, but I have a bone to pick with you.

Yes, many very nice people in this forum contributed to your project. But dude, you did it. You sought outside technical assistance, you did the design and construction. Then, you tested, and continue to refine your design.

And because of that, I am absolutely blown away.

Because you are spreading the credit around, that speaks volumes about the kind of upstanding person you are. It is my opinion that you have a very good head on your shoulders.

[Ciro Pabón]

Well, basizeland, the only word that come to my mind is: cool. It's incredible what a little discussion can make. The people that collaborated are still here, if you want to chat about racing. You're a good team leader, man.

[Mystery Steve]

Brett, you seem like a real nice person, but I have a bone to pick with you.

Yes, many very nice people in this forum contributed to your project. But dude, you did it. You sought outside technical assistance, you did the design and construction. Then, you tested, and continue to refine your design.

And because of that, I am absolutely blown away.

Because you are spreading the credit around, that speaks volumes about the kind of upstanding person you are. It is my opinion that you have a very good head on your shoulders.

+1

This is the type of thread that I like to see at FSAE.com, but they rarely occur. That forum has become so saturated with "how do I design part X, I want the process from start to finish all laid out for me," and I've pretty much stopped checking for new posts as a result. Instead, indeed you did show the initiative and effort from the beginning, and that is why everyone here has been so helpful. And they've been happy to help. Going through school, I noticed that the majority of my classmates fell into two categories; those that had the drive to do more and those that didn't, and I don't think that's a trait you can teach. Needless to say, this thread is evidence that you do have the drive and it will serve you well in the future.

Looking at the new design, it's hard to say if it's "better" without looking at any dynamics or CFD data, but it does look cool. If you have solid reasoning to justify the changes, then go for it.

Best of luck at competition, and be sure to post the results.

[LegendaryM]

I was gonna do f1 in schools, but no-one else really wanted to do it. Nevertheless i designed a car but I think yours is alot more developed. I'd love to be able to do it if i could find a team

Ill upload the model if you want as im not doing anything with it
EDIT: I did this in 2008 and it appears the rules have changed since then (It was an R-type car)

[mep]

Nice to see you back.
How did your car perform on the event?

Its nice to see that you still try to improve your design. Especially around the tyres. I think that’s the area where you can most improve the design. We must think of a good way to guide the air around the tyres.

Will you change your front wing layout also?
It looks a bit messy. Round and smooth transitions should cause less drag.

It's also nice to see that you will use a wind tunnel. I hope you will post some pictures or a video of it. I have also done some tests with smoke for my studies. Unfortunately the smoke didn’t always behave like I wanted it.

[The FOZ]

It's also nice to see that you will use a wind tunnel. I hope you will post some pictures or a video of it. I have also done some tests with smoke for my studies. Unfortunately the smoke didn’t always behave like I wanted it.

You may have had trouble with your air source - was it producing a fairly straight airflow (think: air compressor outlet), or was the airflow twisting (coming off an axial fan)?

I've seen designs in HVAC where two fans are placed back to back, rotating in opposite direction, but one having an opposite blade pitch to the other. The net effect is the twisting of the air is more or less neutralized.

[basizeland]

Thanks for everything that you guys said it gives me a boost to keep working really hard at it because everyone else in the team does next to nothing so i end up having to do everything from designing the logo, pit display, website, portfolio etc plus I have to write up all the information that goes into these things.

I have tried to do some cfd testing but everytime I do it i cant seem to get it to converge so the result is never the correct one and if i do the same car twice i end up with a different result.

Hey LegendaryM I know what its like not having anyone else wanting to do it because the other three people in my team like i mentioned do nothing which annoys me but when the team does well like winning the state final i know that the other teams have four or five people working on their effort and i have beaten them all by myself. I really like the look of your car because it is very simple which a lot of the time works really well to give you a fast car although it wouldnt be marked as high in the engineering of the car. It would be great if you could upload you model because i really like the shape of the car at the front how it directs the airflow around the wheels so if you dont mind I would love to test it on my car and see how it goes.

Hey Mep the car went really well at the state final where it set the fastest time of the event at 1.046sec but it kept breaking at the front because the towels used to stop the car were really hard so the car was going from 80km/h to a dead stop in about 15cm which the car just couldn't handle. Due to this the car only got 2 good runs so it was hard to tell whether it would have gone faster again. I am happy to change anything on the car because i know it can be made a lot better so im not holding back with anything ill try anything you guys suggest because not only may it make the car faster which im sure it will we also get points for showing our development.

Once I get a decent video camera I will post up a video of the car in the smoke tunnel which will give you guys a better idea of whats happening and ill also run a cfd analysis on the car today and post pics when its finished.

[pipex]

Hi basizeland,
i certainly don't know very much about aero but i have a question about the design in the front. Why redirect the air flow to the center of the car making the surface of the front wing smaller, rather than redirect that flow over the front wheels? The old car seems better to me in this aspect, but i would change the curvature of the front to be similar to the rear (to direct the flow over the wheel). I don't know what option is better.

good luck!

[mep]

Just one idea about the breaking of the car.
Maybe you can develop some technology to soak some glue into the natural pores of the balsa wood. When the glue tries it will get really hard and might make the area of the balsa wood much stronger while keeping a low cross surface. Its just a idea I don’t know if something like this will be allowed by the rules but by this your car would definitely have something different than the other ones.

[basizeland]

Hi Mep that is a good idea and I was thinking of using a glue called Dope to make it easier to paint the car because it soaks in and once it goes hard it leaves a good surface to sand back and once you put paint onto it it wont soak it up making it easier to get a good quality paint job. If i used this it would help me with the paint and also make it stronger which would ensure that it doesn't break again because we are getting our own towels made that are really soft so the car doesn't break. Thanks for the idea I will try it next time I machine a car

[basizeland]

I have been in contact with Richard from Symscape which have designed a CFD program called Caedium, Richard has put my car through their program for me so I thought that i would post some pictures of the result so you guys can see what needs altering on the car.

The floor of the simulation is moving at 22 mps or 80 kph which works out that the wheels are rotating at 16,000rpm and the speed of the gas that is being released from the CO2 canister is 154 mps.

This is showing the pressure



This is showing Velocity



This is showing Velocity with streamlines



So tell me what you think and anything that you can see that needs changing

[flameracing]

ok bret the design that you have tested is the one you should go through with.
You designed it again and left alot more space between the wheel and side pod. its better if you leave little space there fore meaning little drag. Anyway it is your car so its your call.

Matthew

[tok-tokkie]

If you are allowed to saturate the balsa in something to make it stronger then I think super glue (cyanoacrylate)may be best. Q-Bond directly onto the balsa? http://www.alexshanks.com/q-bond-adhesive-large-p620

[basizeland]

tok-tokkie there is nothing in the rules stating that you can't saturate the balsa and I have been looking into soaking it in Dope but if you think that Q-bond would be better and looks like you would be able to fill the grain in the wood with the powder so I might give it a try and see how it goes.

Thanks for the idea

[mep]

I would test the glue thing in advance before you attempt it to your car. You can do some easy tests to see how the glue affects the strength in tension, compression and bending compared to the weight increase. By this you will also figure out what kind of glue you have to use. It should be a really liquid and thin one almost like water so it gets easily soaked deep into the wood. Maybe it will help to take a needle and make some additional holes into the wood to reach deeper layers with your glue.

ok bret the design that you have tested is the one you should go through with.
You designed it again and left alot more space between the wheel and side pod. its better if you leave little space there fore meaning little drag. Anyway it is your car so its your call.

Matthew

How can you know this for sure?
You haven’t seen any results for the other design. You can always improve a design and you should never stop doing so. So basizeland keep on improving your car.

Did the guy from Symscape already give you any advice how to improve your car?
It’s really nice that he simulated your car. Obviously he uses it as promotion for his software and it already pays off for him because I checked his site and maybe I will try his software once.

From the pictures you posted I think the area behind the front wheels can be improved. I think so because at most closed wheel race cars you have free space behind the wheels and the results from your simulations show that there is already some air flowing out from the inside tunnel of the car to the outside. Another way to go could be to get the sidepods closer to the ground to close this path.

I also noticed the red point at the transition between your CO2 canister housing and your rear wing. It should be easy to make this transition smother.

Even before I saw your pictures I thought about some way to design the tunnel in the middle. Currently you have it quite straight from the front to the back. Maybe it is good to have it a bit shaped. Think about something like a venturi channel who opens at the back to slow the air down to the speed of the surrounding area. At the smallest cross section you will have high air speed what causes low pressure there. This might be useful to reduce drag like in front of the tires.