Hi folks, I just wanted to post a thread about the car that I'm modding at the moment. As a former member of the Infinity Racing Team, the FSAE team from Kempten in Germany and sim-racing enthusiast I've been thinking a long time about bringing at least one of our cars to rFactor properly. - Why properly? Well I did a mod for an older car for rF1 some years ago, but that was rather meant to look like the car and somehow drive a bit like it. But now I'm working on our last years car (the TOMSOI IV from season 2012) and i want to get everything as exact as I can get it. That means especially the physics. First of all for those that have never heard of Formula Student (taken from wikipedia): Basically the intention is to give students the possibilty to have practical learing during their studies, and what could possibly be more appealing to train your engineering and business abilities than designing a race car? Each team builds one car per year and in the summer the meat for international race events all over the world. So here you have some impressions from building the car: And this is it: The car itself is very light (about 220kg), has a 4cyl 600ccm Yamaha R6 engine that produces about 85HP. In combination with its short wheelbase and slick tires it is really agile and great fun! 0-100km/h takes about 3.8 seconds in the corners it can reach about 1.5G and about 2.2G under braking. What I have done so far in terms of modding is building and texturing the chassis, the bodywork, the tires and rims and the steering wheel. This is all I need at the moment, because that is all, that is needed to take it to the track. (So its not really looking particularly good so far, but it works... At the moment I'm writing the physics files, which I based on the ISI Skip Barber, but thats rather the structure of the files, as I'm rewriting almost all the data. As I said before I want to rebuild the real car as accurately as possible, as I have almost all the data I need for this including the CAD files, or if I don't have it I know people that have it. And I have to say the first test drives feel as if this could be a really fun racer for small sized tracks, especially karting tracks, when it finally is finished. So this is the way I'd like to do this: Get the physics right and afterwards make it look good. This is the first time I'm making a mod seriously, so probalby you'll find some questions in the other modding forums here. I probably it'll take me some time to finish it, but so far everything worked out for me... In the long term I will probably also do our other cars, if this one turns out to be fun. So thats it for now. I'll keep you updated, if you are interested in this project! Greetings And finally here I have some links for those of you that speak german, or like looking at pictures http://www.infinity-racing.de/ http://www.motorsport-magazin.com/formula-student/news-171782-teamvorstellung-infinity-racing-team/
Very cool idea! But how will you get the tire data for this one? I guess those are special tires for the series!?
You are right... Thats the most difficult part in the physics design. For the beginning I'll take the Skip Barber national slicks and resize them to fit to the car. In the next step I'm going to compare those tires with the tire data we have from the tires we are using in realitiy and then I'll see if I do have to rebuild them complete, or just do some adjustments. I'm not sure about the quality of tire data we have. We had some some data some years ago, but that contained a bit little information. I know, that we have access to better data meanwhile, but I haven't seen them yet. To be honest I haven't really worked with the new tire model yet, so I have to gain some experience with that now. So there are some question marks left in terms of tire modelling.
Contact Continental directly, other major manufacturers have FSAE tire data publicly viewable on their website. I know Avon for certain, and IIRC Hoosier (which would probably be pretty close to Conti). From what I recall the slicks in Grand-Am are just relabeled Hoosiers, as Conti didn't have slicks. Since FSAE is a learning series, the data is more liberally passed around.
very cool project! i know a guy who was involved in the formula student austria team. maybe i can get some data if you need it...
After driving local McGill SAE in LFS, I can't wait to try yours. Good luck with your project und danke.
Cool project (both real world and for this simulation). Just curious, you said: "has a 4cyl 600ccm Yamaha R6 engine that produces about 85HP" Any current R6 engine should have over 100HP easily? I see on the website the RPM Limit is 10K, which is well below peak? A 220kg car with a Supersport bike engine would give about the same performance as a Supersport bike... quite impressive.
Yes you are right. The stock R6 Engine produces more then 100HP, but its down to the rules, that we don't get more power out of it. You have to redesign the air intake to fit the rules (including a 20mm air restrictor) and the exhaust system to fit it to the car. But those 85HP are rather enough compared to the wheight they have to manage. And the performance... Well it's the same with every car vs. bike comparisons. In a straight line a sport bike is hard to beat, but as soon as you reach a corner having 4 wheels is just an huge advantage... One of the most interesting things in Formula Student is the variety of car concepts. As this is meant to be an educational series the rules are pretty extensive, but still leave you a lot of options. So you can't find wto cars that share the same concepts. You can find steeltube chassis as well as aluminium tube chassis or carbon fibre monocoques, pull rod or push rod actuated suspensions, 1cyl engines , 2cyl engines, 4 cyl engines, different rim and tire sizes, high performance electronics as well as "reduce electronics to the minimum" concepts. And all those examples mix up to cars that share the same rules but can be completely different. And almost each of those are beatyful in their own way. The high tech cars from delft or stuttgart as well as cars from the indian teams that can't compete in any way to our western standards, but you can feel the love and energy that has been put in building those cars from whatever parts the could possibly get. But in terms of modding I got the tire data today. It is a lot better than the one I've seen some years ago, but lets see, how I can rebuild them in the sim. The new tire model is quite complex... And finally (not posted here but a quote on Formula Student):
Very interesting work man!! I am from Squadra Corse of Politecnico of Turin! I raced in silverstone and Varano in 2012, looking forward to try yours Here's a video of me testing the car
Hi there, I finally fif get some understanding of the tire model and rezized the Skip Barber Tires to match the size I need. The Problem I have now ist, that I do have the worng infomation about the real tires. I do have the reaction curves, which is the data you need when designing the suspension kinematics. But the rF2 tire model doesn't work that way. You don't put in slip curves but the tire construction and if you do this right you get the right behaviour. But the resized tire feels pretty good as a starting point. With the resized tire I started to redo the car physics. Even though the suspension kinematics still do some strange stuff the car already behaves pretty believable. At first I was quite confused, because the rear end was extremely unstable in some corners during my test drives, but then I realized that in those corners I had cornering speed of over 100kph (I imported La Conca to the dev mode for handling tests), which is not the cornering speed those car usually do. And upon that it is quite possible that a car with the wheelbase of 1.55m gets unstable under high cornering speeds. Finally adding some diff lock could cure this pretty much. So physics design and testing goes on. I'll probably meet up soon with the suspension guy of our team to sort out if the strange things the suspension is doing is my fault, or the fault of the way the physics are designe in the gmotor engine.
The car itself is very light (about 220kg), has a 4cyl 600ccm Yamaha R6 engine that produces about 85HP. Hi Rocksor, I race at the british superbikes and used to be in the superstock 600 class. Standard Yamaha's have around 115-118bhp with a full exhaust system, power commander (fuel mapping module that bypass the standard ECU) and a decent air filter the Yamaha r6 is doing 123-125bhp. I was on a kawasaki zx6r with 127.8bhp at the back wheel. Also we ran 2d data logging system and recorded my best start 0-100kph in 2.9 seconds but on average depending on the gearing it was 3.1 seconds. But then again the bike only weighed 166kg straight after a race. Hopefully this will help with your mod
VERY cool. I have a friend who was involved in the entry from South Africa (Cape Town University of Technology) Keen to see progress on this one (especially with us having Silverstone as a track to race on)
ran across this, thought of the thread. http://www.michelinman.com/mediabin.../Digital/5-4-1_Michelin-Tire-Data-Package.pdf
Electric car!!! Great!!! I study mechanical engineering at a Portuguese school called ISEC. Our department has 2 formulas right now, Phi 2.09 (CB600RR engine) and Phi 3.0 (electrical engines) that is just being finished, it can go from 0-100km/h in less than 3 seconds Honestly, i prefer the high reving CB600RR screaming than the silent electrical ones.... But anyway, would be great to have them here. Cheers
hi everyone, I have to prepare a model of formula student car to run on Rfactor. I haven't done anything like this before could anyone please help me to get started. thank you
