Archive for February, 2009

Updated: Added high speed camera video’s of the crash test.

We tested our crash nose on the 26th of February at TÜV Rheinland TNO Automotive International in Helmond. TTAI is specialized in automotive crash tests.

Our nose is made out of carbon fiber with foam laminated in between. This gives us a lightweight cone able to absorb a lot of energy.

The nose was mounted on a 300 kg car and was launched at a wall at 7 m/s. The purpose of this test was to prove that the maximum deceleration remains below 40g’s with an average deceleration of 20g’s.
The results proved that this cone was able to decelerate the car with an average deceleration of 15g’s, with a maximum peak at 25g.

University Racing Eindhoven has successfully signed in for Formula SAE Italy 2009. The event will take place from the 4th to the 7th of September at the Riccardo Paletti Circuit in Italy. Again there was a big rush on the registration. A total of 80 teams tried to register for the event, in which only 40 teams are allowed to participate.

The registration for Formula SAE Italy means that University Racing Eindhoven will compete at all the three European events this summer. Of course the team is very enthusiastic about this, especially when looking at the incredible rush of teams for all the events. This shows the competition has grown immensely with around 450 teams worldwide. Even though this has some negative sides, for example teams who weren’t able to sign up for any of the events, we are looking forward to the events.

After weeks of hard work our engine test bed is operational. While the new test bed was being build we modified our Suzuki GSX-R 600 K2 engine to get more power from it. The compression ratio has been increased and we build our own custom intake. Even though we are restricted by a 20mm intake, we still measured a promising 95.4 BHP on our very first run.

We are aiming to get more power and less fuel consumption in the next couple of weeks.

After designing, drawing, and manufacturing them, our uprights are ready to be mounted on the car. Because of our multilink suspension the uprights are a little bit bigger than conventional ones, but this is compensated by the big improvements it gives in our vehicle dynamics.

To connect our wheel to our chassis we use carbon fiber rods. In these rods aluminum inserts are glued. This gives us a lightweight and very strong connection. To make sure these rods are strong enough to withstand a race we test them with twice the force they normally endure before they are mounted on our car, as can be seen on the second picture.