Welcome

Duke University Motorsports is a student group that designs and builds open wheel, single seat race cars to compete in the Formula SAE competition sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers. The team consists of Duke students from both Pratt and Trinity, in all classes. The purpose of the team is to provide students with a way to gain practical design and manufacturing experience in a fun and challenging setting.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Active aero in action

Unfortunately, my phone sucks at taking video, but this is the best clip we got today of the active aero in action.


 Unfortunately, one of the radiator tabs fatigued and broke today, so we didn't get very much running time.  But I'm pleased to say the engine tune is in a much better place than a couple weeks ago and the car drives well.  It's a bit loose right now, but we'll do some more tuning once we get to Goodyear's proving grounds.
Wing angle vs position - red is full downforce, blue is minimum drag
Above is a plot of wing angle from the GPS plot.  Seems to work pretty well so far, but plenty more tuning to go.  I did realize today from looking at the data that my longitudinal accelerometer axis is reversed - oops.  If you look at the graph above, you can see this clearly (the course is clockwise) - there is less wing angle when braking before the corner and lots of wing angle accelerating out of the corner, the opposite of what should happen.

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