Monitoring Tyre Behaviour in Formula Racing
Formula SAE is an international engineering competition where student teams compete with single-seater race cars they have designed and built themselves. Mantracourt have sponsored the 'Ecole de Technologie Superieure' (ETS) engineering team from the University of Quebec since 2009, providing instrumentation for their prototype design and build.
452 teams from 41 different countries spread across 5 continents take part in the competition and there are major Formula SAE events held in the USA, UK and Germany. Events also take place all over the world in countries such as Austria, Hungary, Japan, Thailand, Brazil and Australia.
The ETS Formula SAE Team from the University of Quebec is renowned for its lightweight and ergonomic car design, its excellent suspension design and its scientific approach to vehicle validation and development. The ETS car weighs less than 525 pounds (driver included), a quality that makes difficult tyre choice and tyre exploitation.
The Problem:
In the objective of better understanding the tyre behaviour, strain gauges were installed on all suspension links to measure the force that the tyre generates. There are two concerns, firstly, a race car generates a lot of electro-magnetic noise from the ignition system and telemetry. Due to this, the distance between the strain gauge and the amplifier has to be reduced. Secondly, to provide significant data, the weight of the whole system must not alter the dynamics of the car.
The Solution:
Combined with two 2-axis slip-angle optical sensors, a tyre model was carried out while acquiring the vertical, longitudinal and lateral load of the tyre compared with the slip angle at each wheel. This allowed for better suspension design through simulations at the initial design phase, allowing for iterations and optimizations that would not be cost effective through expensive track testing. This data also serves as a reference for suspension and chassis load cases to further reduce the weight of the vehicle and allow the reduction of safety factors without risk of failure. At the Formula SAE East 2009 event in Michigan, the ETS team won the endurance race event and the engineering design event against 119 teams from 10 countries.
Photo image courtesy of Remi Saint-Onge, ReflETS.
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