Motorsport Sector Archived News - 2008
ACG Presents Award for ‘Best use of Composites’- July 2008
On Saturday 12th July 2008 the Advanced Composites Group’s (ACG’s) Technical Support Manager, Jon Kennerley, and ACE’s Engineering Manager, Liam Moloney, visited Silverstone, Northamptonshire, the UK’s premier racing circuit, to judge entrants for the ‘Best use of Composites’ category award, just one of thirty category awards being presented at the 2008 Formula Student event.
Over 110 teams from across the globe entered this years’ Formula Student event at Silverstone. The aim of the event is to ‘provide opportunities for students to develop and demonstrate their skills, enthusiasm, ingenuity and commitment to engineering excellence’.
The future of industry in general depends on the promotion of careers and excellence in engineering. This real-life exercise, which includes design, manufacture, marketing and people skills, gives a realistic insight into future career aspects of commitment, team-working and tight timescales. Students’ skills and talents are tested to the limit during their build, testing and race programmes, where many experience insomnia, frustration and technical challenges.
The 2008 event is the sixth time that ACG has sponsored the ‘Best use of Composites’ category award at this prestigious annual event. Having signed a three-year agreement with Formula Student in 2007, ACG will be providing support and encouragement to teams utilising advanced composite materials in their effort to become the ‘best in category’ and, hopefully, the overall winner of the Formula Student series.
After careful deliberation, our venerated judges chose the team from Universität Bayreuth, Germany (car 44) as the winner of the Group’s ‘Best use of Composites’ Award. The team’s dedication to making best use of advanced composites materials for the purpose of weight reduction, strength and safety were met in full, and were expertly applied by those who can be referred to as tomorrow’s professionals. Team Universität Bayreuth used advanced composite materials for a raft of components on their car, ‘FR8 Chromo’.
All major structural components on the vehicle, such as the chassis, wishbones and rims, were manufactured using autoclave cured carbon fibre reinforced prepregs (CFRP). Covers, side pods and the seat pan, which are non-structural parts, where CFRP manufactured, partly wet lay-up, while housings, steering wheel, intake plenum/manifold, fuel tank, oil pan, cylinder head cover, cooling air duct and the brake ducts were manufactured by rapid prototyping of a polyamide/glass composite blend.
The Universität Bayreuth team concentrated on the structural components in their FS report, a factor that was quite evident on the car. Their decisions to use composites for the specified components are reflected in the team’s three common objectives:
Taking just one area of the car, an extract from the Team’s report gives a fair indication of the depth of thought that went into the selection of material and component design
Including roll-hoops weight of 19kg and stiffness of 5300 Nm/° is reached. This means a reduction of 32% in weight and 96% increase in stiffness in comparison to car 44’s predecessor. The lay-up configuration features an aluminium honeycomb sandwich with two thicknesses and an average of four layers of carbon plies per skin. Aluminium flex-core honeycomb was chosen because of better drapability, slightly better static properties and much better dynamic properties in comparison to aramide honeycomb. PMI or PVC foam was excluded because the geometry of the chassis would have made it necessary to mill or thermoform the core, which would have meant a more complex manufacturing process. The configuration of 245g twill fabric and 250g UD plies was optimized with regard to stiffness/weight aspect as well as to structural safety requirements using FEA.’
You only had to glance at the FS entrants to realise that the teams had put their hearts and souls into their respective cars, with profound dedication to the task at hand being displayed at every turn, even when things started to go wrong. These participants, engineers of the future, will surely have the opportunity to progress to even better things as they evolve from their studies and enter the world as potential winners in their own right.
ACG’s association with the motorsport industry, which dates back to the company’s inception in the early 1970’s, has intensified over the years; ACG currently supplies nearly 200 different specifications of composite materials to the team and prides itself on its own particular contribution to the successes of many Formula One teams.
The Formula Student web site carries a log of this and past events, and is well worth a visit. Please visit their website at www.formulastudent.com, where a full list of winners can be found. The Universität Bayreuth Team web site can be found at www.elefantracing.de.
For further details contact ACG Sales Department.
Success for Aston Martin Racing at Circuit de la Sarthe with ACG Prepregs - July 2008
As Aston Martin Racing's official composite materials supplier, Advanced Composites Group, part of the Composites Division of Umeco plc, is proud to have played its role as the supplier of a wide range of LTM®, VTM® and MTM® tooling and component prepregs to the prestigious constructor of the Aston Martin Racing race cars.
In particular, ACG’s MTM28 and MTM57 prepregs have been expertly applied in the manufacture of components for use in demanding environments across the entire structure of the race cars. Both products offer flexible processing, either via autoclave, vacuum bag or press curing, and both exhibit good impact resistance and excellent toughness.
Just one year on from Aston Martin’s first victory in the GT1 class, ACG is delighted to report that the 009 DBR9 of David Brabham, Antinio Garcia and Darren Turner has claimed another GT1 win at the Circuit de la Sarthe, near Le Mans, France. Just like last year, car 009, in resplendent Gulf livery, took the class victory at Le Mans for the sports cars, which are closely based on their road-going equivalents.
At the half-way point in the race, car 009 and its pursuer were separated by less than four seconds. Even at the finish, having covered 4,500 kilometres, 009 and its pursuing Corvette rival were less than five minutes apart. The drivers and the car were flawless throughout the 24 hours. Brabham, Garcia and Turner represented the perfect blend of youth and experience, each bringing their own area of expertise to the challenges of the 14-kilometre circuit.
Brabham, who started and finished the race, commented: “I’ve competed at Le Mans 15 times, but this is the closest race I’ve ever experienced. That’s exactly how I thought it would be from the start of the year, and of course it makes our second win here even more satisfying. The finish was particularly tense; we really didn’t know how it was going to work out up until the very last lap. I’ve never driven a race where I’ve had to push so hard from the very start to the very end: I think it’s been a great show for everyone.”
Antonio Garcia, a new recruit to the Aston Martin Racing team this year, who qualified the 009 car in fourth and soaked up the pressure from the Corvette when it was at its closest, commented: “It was actually a perfect event for us, but there were some stressful moments. When I got the message in the middle of the night that the Corvette was right behind me, I was a bit worried at first but then I realised that we had the pace to pull away, so from then on it was a bit easier. Mechanically the car has been perfect: very quick, and very easy to drive.”
Darren Turner – who has been an Aston Martin Racing driver since the programme started in 2005 – drove two crucial stints that proved to be major elements that led to the victory: one quadruple stint during the night, and the penultimate stint in hazardously wet and dry conditions. “Lots of people say that winning is easier the second time round, but I’m not sure that’s true,” he said. “Every victory is tough but this one was something else. The fact that we managed to achieve it against such strong opposition is a huge tribute to the entire team. Conditions were far from easy, but thanks to a great car and a great team we were able to do it.”
The second factory Aston Martin DBR9, 007, finished fourth in class thanks to an excellent drive from Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Andrea Piccini and Karl Wendlinger. The 007 car was running in a strong third overall when it encountered an alternator problem just after 5am on Sunday morning. Some excellent pit work from the Aston Martin Racing team meant that the car was out again in just 15 minutes, and then ran faultlessly to the finish.
David Richards, Chairman of Aston Martin, commented: “For me, Le Mans is the greatest motor race in the world and to win it for the second consecutive year is a brilliant endorsement of a fantastic team effort – particularly in the iconic colours of Gulf.”
The Aston Martin DBRS9 is based on the DB9 road car, but with several modifications to make it suitable for racing. While it retains the DB9's six-litre V12 engine, the fuelling system has been modified and the ECU recalibrated for the bio-ethanol fuel. The drive train and general suspension configuration has also been retained from the road car, but the DBRS9 has racing springs and dampers, as well as a sequential racing gearbox and ACG composite bodywork to help reduce the weight.
For further details contact ACG Sales Department.