David Finchett Photography
UWR team
Competitiveness is often discouraged, positioned as an undesirable trait. But try telling the thousands of motor racing engineers across the continent that ‘it’s the taking part that counts’. It’s their job to put the best race car on the track, to not be an also-ran, but to be the winner. While race car drivers chase their peers on the tarmac, the team behind them must chase the thousandth of a second difference in the turn of a corner. It might be the difference between a podium finish and simply being an afterthought.
At the University of Wolverhampton Racing (UWR), the students learn this on the job. They’re thrown in at the deep-end. Student teams are involved in the Formula Student; Formula 3 Cup; Morgan Challenge Cup; and Hill Climb competitions. By the end of their very first semester, students are expected to meet a design freeze deadline for Formula Student and have fully prepared race cars for the start of the other championships. In the 30 months that follow they will be educated in motorsport engineering, aerospace engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, or electrical engineering.
Lenovo Workstations are providing the platform for the 30 UWR students to integrate 3D metal and polymer printing technologies; CAD software; CNC manufacture; aerodynamics; wind tunnel testing; and race car data acquisition to find those fractions of a second needed. The fact that the four teams are made up primarily of students, and not qualified engineers, shows how committed UWR is to ensuring they bridge the so-called ‘valley of death’ between higher education and industry. It’s perhaps why UWR has seen 100% of its students from these engineering disciplines find work within the motor sports industry upon completion of their degree.
Lenovo Workstation Thinkstation P310 harnessed by UWR.
For that to happen, though, they must impress the UWR educators through their work in whichever of the four competitions they participate. Like many universities, UWR competes in the Formula Student championship, which sees students design, build and race their car on the track. Its Formula 3 team supports professional driver, Shane Kelly, who has achieved nine podium finishes so far this term. A group of students supports two non-professional drivers in Morgan Motor Company’s Morgan Challenge. Meanwhile, in the British Hill Climb Championships, just two students share the workload between them.
While the teams, workloads and responsibilities differ, they all have access to the Lenovo Workstations. These machines run software which includes solutions from Autodesk, SolidWorks, Ansys, and Materialise, and underpin file preparation for 3D printers from EOS, 3D Systems, and Stratasys.
“Lenovo has been fantastic to work with, and they kit the whole facility out effectively, so we’re able to simulate,” Dave Tucker, Principal Lecturer, Faculty of Science and Engineering, begins. “On the Formula 3 team, we spend a lot of time looking at the aerodynamic set-up. The car is one thing, but every element of the car is adjustable.
“You want to be chasing the very best time. You’re talking probably a thousandth of a second per corner on any given lap that you’re trying to find to beat the competition with. Aerodynamics is critical to that, and when every element of the car is completely adjustable, a lot of simulation goes on behind the scene. This year we’ve spent a lot of time on the Lenovo Workstations simulating, by Computational Fluid Dynamics, the airflow over the F3 car. We’re looking to add lightness, to quote Colin Chapman (founder of Lotus Cars).”
After each race of each car in each championship, analytics are carried out to examine exactly where the race was won and lost, and how the race could be better driven next time round. They’re up against the clock, races are often bi-weekly, but when parts need to be designed, produced, and in some cases shipped, time is of the essence. It tests the students engineering ability as well as composure. UWR has sought to acquire a range of 3D printing platforms to support their races against other teams and the clock. Tucker tells TCT Formula Student acts as a good platform to test conceptual designs ‘in anger’ before implementing them in the F3 Championship, for example.
MARK BIRCHILL PHOTOGRAPHY
UWR team working on a car
This year, the Formula Student car has driven with 3D printed uprights, in titanium, which hold the wheel bearings; 3D printed exhaust manifolds; 3D printed suspension components, and 3D printed rear disc bracketry. “Anything on the car that would benefit from lightweighting,” summarises Mark Stanford, a UWR Professor. “If we could lattice a part out and remove the internal structures of the part and add a lattice structure internally to remove weight, we tended to 3D print it, and we tended to produce mainly in metal. To do that we utilised the [EOS] M 270 and M 290.
“We benefitted from the parts being lighter, being quicker to make. If there were duplicate parts to make then, we could make them and build them on the same platform. We could build ten of one part at the same time, rather than one by one.”
UWR’s M270 platform is an extended machine that, as well as running titanium, can also support reactive materials – a perk of the university’s partnership with EOS. Between the metal parts on the EOS machines and the ABS parts on the Stratasys platform, Tucker feels they are “getting the right material in the right place on the car” that “can take the loadings and the stresses that we need when we design.”
A pair of exhaust manifold tubes
While passing safety standards, they’re also contributing to the lightweighting of UWR’s vehicles. For three years now they have been racing in the Formula Student Championship, and from the first year to third year, the car design has seen dramatic changes in look and performance alike.
“The improvement has been significant,” assesses Tucker. “As soon as you talk race car dynamics, inevitably the weight of the vehicle becomes a key factor. The weight saving across from the first year car to the third year car is over 60 kilograms, and that accounts for a quarter of the car. They’re only a couple of hundred kilos, these cars, so the percentage weight differential is massive. That’s where the agility comes from, that’s where the competitive edge is going to come from.”
For many of the students involved in the four championships, Formula 1 is the aspiration. For Tucker and Stanford, Formula 1 is the inspiration. Seven of the leading F1 teams have incorporated Lenovo Workstations to streamline their workflows. Many of them have also publically announced their adoption of 3D printing technology. Due to their financial clout and competition regulations, they can harness it to greater effect. For example, they can conduct real-time analytics while the car is on track. UWR can’t in the F3 or Formula Student competitions, instead of having to wait until the car is back at base. They’re virtually the same technologies, a calculated decision by UWR to make their students familiar with industry-standard equipment, but also to add lightness and drive success in the grassroots competitions.
“The key thing for us is performance,” explains Mike Leach, Lenovo Workstation Technologist and Business Development Manager. “In motor racing, they will do whatever they can to extract the absolute best out of the tools they’ve got to play with, and our Workstations give them the edge that they can translate onto the racetrack. The race car you finish the season in is nothing like the one you start a race season. Our Workstations are dynamic enough to support that throughout the lifecycle of their season.”
