Formula Student chassis for sale

We ave been donated a formula student chassis (18+yrs university motorsport) which we are looking to sell to raise funding for our Greenpower team...

Projectile gets a head cowling and 1st paint

Spent a happy couple of days preparing Projectile for its forthcoming race at Rockingham raceway in Northamptonshire on Monday.

Starting with the head cowling which should hopefully improve the aerodynamics somewhat.

Constructed from strips of pink foam taped and glued together

Doesn't look too bad (from a distance) The white circles are where Tash and Poppy
smoothed on some filler to help the number roundels stick better (we lost one at Goodwood)

The cowling was coated with one layer of fiberglass before hand brushing on some white Smoothrite....

And after a 1st coat of paint it looks better still...

Here you can also see the aerofoiled roll bar to further reduce drag...

Another coat of white and then some red and silver to finish!

Must try and get some white duck tape for the wheel valve covers on the inside of the wheels...black stands out like a sore thumb!!!

VERY EXCITING FIA FORMULA E LAUNCH!!!!

So on Monday we were extraordinarily privileged to be invited by Jeremy Way the CEO of Greenpower,  to represent the whole of Greenpower at the global launch of the FIA's new Formula E (like formula one but electric cars!!!) During the event, Jeremy launched the new Greenpower kit car, which is to be launched internationally alongside Formula E and will be shipped to 10 local schools from each city that Formula E stages a race in, starting with Bejing in China.

Formula E car

New Greenpower international kit car

The event took place at the prestigious Camden Roundhouse and was attended by about 450 members of
the press, as well as the teams and drivers of Formula E.

Setting up at the Camden Roundhouse

My chosen student representatives Reece and Natasha, were interviewed on the stage along with Jeremy about their Greenpower experiences

On the celebrity sofas, waiting to be interviewed.

Being interviewed about their experiences

We then had the opportunity to mingle with the guests, meeting many of the drivers and team managers of Formula E.....

With Sir Frank Williams or Williams Motorsport

With Jarno Trulli (ex-formula 1 champion) and Michelle Cerruti
New driver for team Trulli GP 

With Alain Prost (ex F1 champion)

With Nicolas Prost Driver for Renault E.Dams

With Karun Chandhok Driver for Mahindra 

With Nick Heidfeld Driver for Venturi

With Bruno Senna Driver for Mahindra

With Katherine Legge Driver for Amlin

We had a fantastic evening and were treated like celebrities, with many real celebrities taking a genuine interest in Greenpower and our students' experiences.

Tash with the Venturi Formula E car

Power gets a Back Axle

Following last weekends race, the year 9 team had a good Wednesday session resulting in a nearly completed back axle.

Die-cutting M12 thread is hard work!

Back axle bearing blocks and brake calipers mounted

Axle and discs in place and the same pin-drive system we use on Projectile
allows for quick wheel and sprocket changes

Startin to look quite car-like!!!

So next to mount the front axle/rollbar combo.

Goodwood race report

Last weekend saw our first race of the season and the very first outing for our new car "Projectile". The car was only just ready and still has a lot of finishing to be done (including some paint!).

Tash and Ellie Pennick  (aka Crash and Panic) prepare Poppy for her first drive

Good luck Poppy, chocks away!

Nikhil prepares to push off from the Grid.

The day didn't get of to the best start, as during the first race we quickly realized that the batteries weren't fully charged for year 9's Darkside of the Plume forcing and early retirement from the race. Projectile's race went better but from the telemetry we could see that we were in much too high a gear causing us to retire near the end of the race in an attempt not to damage out batteries too severely!

With Darkside consigned to the paddock for the second race, we quickly changed plans and having changed to a lower gear ratio, we decided to try and give as many of our new drivers a stint behind the wheel as possible.

So as the final flag fell, we managed 16th place out of 45 cars. Very promising considering that we did twice as many pit stops for driver changes as necessary AND it transpires we overcompensated on the gear ratio and went too low, this time effectively finishing with half a tank left!!! A gear ratio somewhere in the middle next time I think!

To top off a rapidly improving day, the team walked away with the Siemens trophy for best engineered car and second prize for best portfolio (for this very blog!!) YAY!

So onto the next race (July 5th) which will be a year 9 special at Ford's Dunton Technical Centre in Basildon.

Just about ready!!

This weekend is our first race of the season and following a weeks worth of frenetic tinkering, our new car Plume Projectile will race!! Admittedly it won't be sporting any paint or a drivers head fairing.......but it will race!!!

Reece tries out the harnesses.

The new headrest (it now has a lot more padding!)

View from the front.

So tomorrow morning, we leave the school at 5.30am (groan!) to head for Goodwood with both our old car Darkside of the Plume and the new Plume Projectile. The weather forecast is good and we are all quite excited to see how the new year 9 team will perform and how the new car will do. Mr Raymond has been very busy making and programming the new on-board computer which will help monitor and regulate our power usage.

Mr Raymond tests the new super bright brake light......err.......

I shall post a full race report with details of the races on the day, but if you would like to follow the racing live, you can check out this website:

http://bbk-online.net/gpt/event84.htm

Body shell fitting and harness check.

Managed to squeeze a morning's work during 1/2 term holiday in which I trimmed the body shell to slot over the roll bar. It will be bolted to the aluminium strips that run along each side of the chassis with 6 screws, 3 each side.

Ugly slots to fit over the roll-bar triangulation will ultimately be
covered by a helmet fairing, although I doubt this will be in place
by the first race!!

Roll bar top clearance looks good for at least 50 mm.

Sure is snug in there!! Probably a little less so for intended
students instead of tubby me!!! harness fits really well and has tons of adjustment.

Still to complete....Battery hatch hinge+catch, drivers headrest, helmet fairing, wiring......the list goes on....

Some cool CAD and virtual wind tunnel testing for POWER

Before the year 9 team began the build of Plume Power, some fairly intensive CAD sessions (it took 7 versions to get it right) resulted in a comprehensive set of plans for the team to follow:

Pro Desktop assembly (including driver!)

Plywood chassis tub bodywork over the top is to
be Correx thin corrugated plastic.

Looking pretty like the CAD drawing!!

carefully dimensioned 2D set of plans.

After about an hour and a half in the virtual wind tunnel. This is free software from Autodesk (Flow Design)

Nice smooth flow lines....

Not much turbulence to the rear.

The final analysis with the wind speed set at 13 metres per second (30 mph) gave a Coefficient of drag of 0.28 and a drag force of 6.749 Newtons.

Not sure if this is good, bad, indifferent or even useful until I consult our resident Physicist, Mr. Raymond.........sure is interesting and cool though!!!!

OK!! by comparison here is a wheels-out car I designed a while back (fairly comparable
to the yr 10-11 Projectile. Its test results are a CofD of 0.46 and a drag force of 12.37 Newtons
That's quite a bit of difference......the year 10's and 11's may have some competition with Power!!

Not long now!

So, with 2 weeks to go before our first race of the season at Goodwood (on 8th June), work on Projectile continues at an ever more frantic pace!

This week, saw the drivers 5 point harness get mounted, a seat back fabricated, the nosecone attached and a drive-train guard made and fitted.

Not the most comfortable, but we might ask Miss French
to help upholster the seat back with some padding and
some CNC embroidery!!

Chain and sprockets safely inside the box and away from fingers
(and the drivers head!!)

Just the body shell to fit and the wiring to do now!

Meanwhile the yr 9 team welcome a new team member and continue to work steadily fitting the rear axle mounts...

Welcome to our new yr 9 team member Alex Lee Ranson....there he is in the car, lets all point!

Axle mount 'triangles' have been boarded over an bonded on
with waterproof PVA. Now to drill them and bolt on the back axle!