newsletter January 2019
Beginning Production Text: Martin Berger & Eirik Bodsberg Photos: Martin Berger & Ă˜yvind Ingebrigtsen
A new year and a new semester have begun. The CAD designs have been refined and thoroughly checked in case of any flaws or collisions before machine drawings were made, revised and approved. After the design period this autumn, it is now time to start production of the racecar. To produce a race car in 4 months, a lot of time needs to be put into preparations and production planning. This is the time of year when we call our partners’ on a near daily basis, to make sure we have a good understanding of the complex parts to be made, and processes to be completed. As appointments have been set with many of our partners, they are ready for the production of the many different parts that builds up our race car, we can start to plan out the
entire production phase and how we will realize the product we have been working so hard on the previous semester. For many of the production processes we do, special tools are needed, and we have been working hard to get everything done for the start of production. The chassis, for example, is going to be produced at Kongsberg. This big piece requires a lot of planning and preparation, and a squad of 7 people just left to begin the exiting work of creating a self-supporting composite monocoque. A lot of underlying work has been done, and the production can begin for full now in February. Another example is the aerodynamic package. We have been cutting and gluing together MDF plates. They are then going to be shaped by using multi-axis CNC operated milling machines owned by sponsors like SINTEF Ocean, Molstad and Shape, and are to be guided by our own (self-taught) CNC-operators. These are then used as molds for molding the carbon fiber parts at a later stage in the production.
Driver Training Text: Martin Berger
The most important part of our race car is arguably the driver (Not including the driverless race car obviously). Without a competent driver, it does not matter if we improve our race car downforce or shave off a couple kilos of its weight. It is never going to be able to drive faster than how far the driver is comfortable pushing it and that should be to the cars limit. That is why driving training is of the upmost importance. Since we live in a country far to the north we experience a lot of snow. That is not ideal for taking a race car out for driving. Doing so also requires a whole team to ensure that everything works as it should and to ensure
safety in case something should happen. The battery also lasts a limited time and would degrade with every time we recharge it. Then how should we train our drivers? The answer is through using our simulator. Using “Live for Speed�, with custom made conetracks based on the formula student competitions. With this our drivers can drive without a whole team or having to recharge the battery every so often. Once a week, the drivers also go out go-carting. Here they can try the theory from the simulator in practice.
Succeeding With Text: Erik Brettingen Johansen Photos: Erik Brettingen Johansen
Revolve NTNU signed a partnership with SAP at the end of 2018, this will help us be more competitive in the 2019 season and beyond, through the use of SAP solutions for data streaming and analytics. As ATMOS, our most recent car, turned out to be the highest performing car so far for Revolve NTNU, one of the most important challenges for team 2019 is to understand exactly why the car performed so well. In fact, our vehicle concept this year is based on ATMOS, which means that all systems are aiming to keep the strengths and improve the weaknesses of ATMOS. An important step to achieve this is to analyze the car’s performance, which we do for each car we build. To do this we had to develop our own software program, and in 2014 Revolve Analyze made its first appearance. Over the years, many improvements have been made to the program, and now we can use it to for example decide the stiffness of the dampers or learn how the car behaves during braking. The problem with Revolve Analyze is that it is limited to analyze one run at a time, which makes it hard to see the bigger picture and see trends in the data. Revolve NTNU was in need of a way to store streaming data in a structured and scalable way, and analyze the data in real time in order to tune our car settings during testing and get the best setup for competitions. This is why we teamed up with SAP, because their solutions let us do exactly this. The
applications are many. When implemented we will be able to look for patterns in the data, which for example could help us debug the inverter, or help us decide what setup is best at the track. We will also be able to get notifications before the battery temperature gets too hot. Why does SAP want to team up with Revolve NTNU? “SAP is at the center of today’s technology revolution. We help our customers become best-run and competitive businesses through our technologies, and that is applicable to sports and engineering where we partner with teams such as McLaren F1” “We are so excited to work closely with talented engineers from NTNU on the Revolve project to: First leverage SAP HANA to help design cars faster and better, and win races. Second, we want NTNU students to test and play around with SAP technologies and discover the value of leveraging them in the future.” “Finally, the project is a showcase for our customers. NTNU students are building from scratch in a matter of months, with limited resources, a quite advanced IoT, data streaming and advanced analytics platform running on SAP, this could hopefully inspire our customers to deliver innovations at a quicker pace.” - Joseph Rohuana, SAP
Photos: Joseph Rouhana and Dietmar Steinbichler from SAP visiting Revolve NTNU for a technical workshop.
Top 10 on the World Ranking Text: Martin Berger Photo: Maru - ŠFSG Complete ranking list: https://mazur-events.de/fs-world/E/
We can almost not believe it, but after several good placements this summer Revolve NTNU has just ranked 8th on the official world ranking list! With 172 teams listed, this is an important milestone and a huge motivator for this years team! We will try our best to make the team and our next car worthy of this placement.
What’s Harder Than the Exams? Text: Helge Bergo
A text about nerves, competitions and lots and lots of practice. Quiz. The activity most formula student teams spend large parts of January on every single year. A period filled with stress, learning, and tons of excitement. All summer, Formula Student competitions are arranged throughout Europe. To decide which teams are allowed to participate in each competition, there is the quiz. And not your typical quiz, the one that you and your family do a cosy evening on your cabin with hot chocolate next to a warm fireplace. No, this quiz is what you would call an exam for engineering students, on steroids. The quizzes combine competition rules with engineering knowledge, everything from what strength steel beams should withstand, to how you would build an autonomous network for making a self-driving car. One question might be about the velocity of spaceships travelling to Pluto, and the next might be what cat meme is pictured.
“The quiz is the most nerve-wracking I have done in a long time”, said one member. There is no point hiding the fact that the quizzes are hard. Timing is everything, and you know that the other contestants are the top engineering students across Europe, all extremely motivated to seize one of the few slots available for each competition. Still, the quiz period is a fun period. All members read rules, solve questions, and discuss loudly with each other for weeks, learning more and more about formula student and engineering as each day passes. Especially the more competitive members, which there are quite a few of, get more and more engaged. Even though the quiz is a grim ordeal, it’s actually a perfect team building exercise. What else does the job better to gather 67 students from 20 different fields to work together and cooperate towards one common goal?
Testing for Success Text: Øyvind Ingebrigtsen Photos: Øyvind Ingebrigtsen
Testing is a big part of optimizing a race car. You need data to know what is happening and if you do not know why something is right, you do not know how it works or how to improve it. Jacob Dahl is 21 years old and is currently studying Cybernetics and Robotics. “I saw how much free time I had as a first-year student and wanted something to fill that time with. Revolve was a natural candidate and I’m happy I chose it!” he says. “I have a position which hasn’t really been here before, therefore I am treading a lot of new ground. This gives me the freedom to really push my ideas through and deliver the best possible result!”. Jacob is responsible for sensors and processing. His biggest responsibility is sensor placement and the processing unit of the driverless race car. “The processing unit (PU) is the brain of the car. It’s therefore pretty important that it works properly so that everyone’s hard work is put into effect.” After strong recommendations from last year’s team, Jacob decided to make a test jig to make gathering data easier. “It’s more hassle than it’s worth to bring the car every time you need to test your code. We therefore built something which has the same functionality in a different package!”
The final product is already in use and the other engineers on the Perception group is currently using it daily so that the software is ready for the hardware tests. The test jig works beautifully and gathering data is as simple as walking around with it, and it automatically transports everything you need over to a USB stick! This can then be played back so that the data can be analysed, understood and the software improved. Although it may look barebone, the current setup was specifically chosen. Jacob set three goals when designing the test jig; It had to be easy to transport, be able to carry some weight and have the possibility to be modified. “It was really important that we could weld on it! The sensors need to be the same distance from each other as in the actual car so our test data is accurate. That’s why it needed to be a custom job. Luckily our testing responsible, Mats is an experienced welder, so with his help it turned out great!” He says. “The current setup is also really nice as it’s really easy to use! I’m proud of what I do, and I like the fact that my work is actually used and that it matters.”.
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