Newsletter for the Rotary Club of Western Endeavour - Issue No.: 1112 Issue Date: 24 Mar, 2024

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CMT's 2016 racecar

Designed, built and raced by students!

This week we heard from Nikki and Taylor, past and current Technical Directors of the Curtin Motorsport Team (CMT).  CMT competes in the Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (FSAE) competition each year, designing and building an open wheel racecar which is taken to Melbourne for the annual competition held at Calder Park Raceway in December.

As a student team, the main priorities are to make better student engineers, through exposure to many practical aspects of engineering, including working closely as a team with a diverse group of people, meeting firm deadlines (no assessment extensions possible!) and seeing all aspects of design, build and operate, not just isolated bits of the lifecycle.  Tools such as FEA (finite element analysis) and CFD (computational fluid dynamics) are useful in the design process, but being able to view the overall design as an assembly in a drawing program can be a great tool for visualisation and ensuring that everything will fit together.  The part drawings forming the assembly can then be used for manufacture, either in a manual process or using a CAM machine (computer aided manufacture).

There are a lot of different areas to consider in designing and buiding a car, even a simplified racecar without all of the extra bits and pieces needed to make a car road legal.

The powertrain of CMT's car uses a modified 600CC 4 cylinder Honda motorcycle engine and gearbox, but we might be switching to a smaller engine in the coming years due to the rules requiring that all air enters the engine through a 20mm restrictor, which significantly drops the peak power of the standard engine.  A smaller engine develops less standard power but requires less air, so might not be as restricted in the FSAE competition, and will hopefully develop similar power to the larger engine while being easier to tune as it's closer to standard.

Finite element analysis showing stresses

Suspension aims to keep the tyres in contact with the road surface at all times, increasing grip, but also to enhance the comfort of vehicle occupants.  On CMT's car a double wishbone suspension is used, with "A-arms" currently made of steel but likely to be a composite design with carbon fibre and aluminium, as seen in the sample part at the meeting.

The electrical system of the car not only supplies power to sparkplugs, water pump, starter motor etc, but is also responsible for all communication between systems - very important for racing where gathering data and optimising all setting can lead to big performance gains.  On CMT's car most of the electrical system is custom designed and built by the students, including the telemetry systems (sending back live data from sensors on the car) and concentric twist wiring loom.

Aerodynamics plays a very important role in motor racing.  "Downforce" pushes the tyres down onto the road, incrasing cornering grip so that the car doesn't have to slow down as much to get around curves.  Nothing is free though, so when downforce is aerodynamically generated, drag is also generated, acting to slow the car down and increasing fuel consumption.  Balancing increased downforce with reduced drag, factoring in the speed of the track and the number of corners, is an important part of aerodynamic design.

CMT has risen to a current high ranking of 14th worldwide (of 528 combustion teams) and 1st in Australia.  They're certainly helping to produce some high quality graduate engineers, and we're looking forward to see what they can do this year!

 

Author: Chris Ford

Published: 28 February, 2017

 


Meeting Rosters
Date
Host
Thanks & Cleanup
3 minute bio
Setup
Writer
26 Mar, 24
Marcus Harris
 
 
Laurie Glossop
Jennifer Lee
02 Apr, 24
Michael Lee
Michael Lee
 
Donna Thornton
Barrie Heald
09 Apr, 24
 
 
Marina Berzins
 
Judy Dinnison
17 Apr, 24
 
 
 
 
 
14 May, 24
Laurie Glossop
 
 
 
Judy Dinnison
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