OBR Newsletter – February 2014
Chassis Manufacture Begins With the flat chassis panels arriving back from Codem Composites at the end of January, the team officially moved into the manufacturing phase for the year.
Matt weighs the chassis down while it is bent around the edge of the workbench
At the beginning of the month the chassis manufacture started with the floor panel, closely followed by the RHS and LHS chassis panels. The chassis team have been flying through the build so far, and once each of the panels were popped out of the jigs we were pretty happy with the shapes and alignment of each panel overall. We saved another 0.3kg and increased the access to the engine bay by making the cut-outs into the rear of the side panels. This will hopefully further increase our chances of reaching the <30kg weight target for the chassis overall. After doing some test fits and gaining some helpful tips from Luke Evans of RBR we were able to join the side panels together, and most recently we have installed the machined aluminium rear bulkhead into the rear chassis.
Rear bulkhead curing into the rear of the chassis
OBR Newsletter – February 2014 We had our first design event practise on the 8th of February, where team Alumni members from Force India, Lotus, McLaren, Marussia, Aston Martin Racing, Toyota Motorsport Germany, Zytek, Wirth Research and Bosch attended to help give the new team members a representation of what the real design review will be like. Overall the ‘Judges’ were very happy with the team’s progress, and were confident that with another 2 design practises scheduled in the lead up to competition we will be in top form by the time that we arrive for Silverstone.
Thanks again to all of the Alumni that attended!
The Aerodynamics department has begun to make some real progress with their manufacturing, and since the foam moulds came back from the hot-wire CNC cutters; they have been working hard on manufacturing and hand-finishing the fiberglass female moulds. It will not be long until the first profiles are ready to go, once again thanks to the use of Banbury & Bicester College’s Autoclave.
Fibreglass female moulds in progress
The Chassis group completed and submitted our Structural Equivalency Spreadsheet for the new chassis to the 2014 FSUK and FSG events. The new carbon skin material has allowed us to save a measured 6.5kg in the skin weights compared to the 2013 chassis, while still allowing us to open up larger holes for access and cooling into the engine bay.
OBR Newsletter â&#x20AC;&#x201C; February 2014
Skin shear testing in progress
Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also good news for the engine group, who have been able to run the 570cc engine (big thanks to CamCoat for the piston and combustion chamber coating) on the dyno for the first time. They have been working on gaining comparison data between the two cylinder sizes, and have been testing intake runner lengths, plenum volumes and exhaust lengths in order to try to optimise the performance of the engine for the FSUK and FSG track layouts. In addition to this we have also agreed a partnership with Swindon Engines. This is a really promising tie-up; that will see Swindon helping us out with their extensive engine design & development experience, and manufacturing some parts for our new intake system. We were lucky enough to get a tour around their facility in Swindon, and are looking forward to more visits in the coming months.
Swindon Engines joins us as a Sponsor
Looking ahead to March we will be heading out testing early on to gain some track data with the 570cc engine, and we will be working on the launch control and automatic shifting systems & driver training. We will also be attending the Santander awards evening in Headington, to give thanks to the support from our biggest sponsor Santander Universities. We are also looking forward to heading back to Base Performance to run some more laps in the simulator, hopefully further developing the car and track model so that we are able to test drivers and compare radical changes to the setup and parameters of the car and analyse performance increases.
OBR Newsletter â&#x20AC;&#x201C; February 2014