DigitalEvacuation.org

Now I’ve finally graduated from University I am able to share my final year project, entitled as this post. The work’s abstract is:

Vehicle dynamics simulations are widely used in automotive development by road car companies and race teams for predicting the performance, ride and handling of their vehicles. Race teams want to discover, in particular, how fast their car will go round a circuit in various setup configurations.

The simulation packages used are often proprietary or prohibitively expensive and therefore out of the reach of engineering students and club level race car designers. Also some parameters required to run the simulation accurately are difficult to obtain e.g. tyre data. This project presents a method to predict a car’s single lap performance including ultimate lap time and speed versus time data from empirical data straightforwardly obtained from a data logging system and engine data from a dynamometer or engine builder.

The simulator is compared against real car data logged by an acquisition system and another widely acclaimed lap time simulator, and its performance critiqued. Further enhancements to the simulator to improve its abilities are suggested.

Python was used to create a vehicle dynamics simulation of a racing car. A recent BTCC car was modelled and simulated in the package. The results of the simulation were compared with an industry standard simulator Bosch Lapsim and data from the real car logged with a Pi Research system and analysed with Pi Toolbox. Download the report and an archive containing the Python simulator, report and Lapsim input files for the BTCC car.

I flew out a couple of days early to the Beijing A1GP round giving me a chance to look around a bit (and acclimatise to the time zone!) One thing I had to see there was the Forbidden City. A freezing cold, windy Monday morning gave me the opportunity which I jumped at. Unfortunately, one morning was not enough time to do it justice and a couple of the really large palaces were covered in scaffolding as they are being refurbished for the 2008 Olympics. I did enjoy the main sights armed with an audio guide and got some good pictures though. I would love to go back and give it better attention with a proper guide in the future as the place was absolutely amazing!