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Posted by sagsert
Mustafa Samli Mod Moderator Location: Arizona Join Date: 01/10/2006 Age: Ancient Posts: 824 Rally Car: Gaylant VR4 |
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Mustafa Samli Mod Moderator Location: Arizona Join Date: 01/10/2006 Age: Ancient Posts: 824 Rally Car: Gaylant VR4 |
John duuuuuude them are fighting words where I come from, yet again what isn't.
If I was to cut and paste it would be a million miles long. So I shall cut/paste a teaser; ------------------------- The Physics of Motorsport Richard Bower University of Durham ©1999 Motorsport is dangerous! --- even for spectators. This lecture course is not intended to encourage you to take part in Motorsport or drive illegally or dangerously. The ideas presented in this course are simple approximation of a truly complicated system. You are in no way recomended to apply them to your own machine or driving style! Aims of the Course This course looks at the physics involved in designing and driving fast racing cars. It will concentrate mainly on four wheeled, petrol driven vehicles, but the same physical problems apply to all kinds of vehicles. By taking this course, I hope you'll learn from: applying physical principles to a real-world problem. figuring out how to build a better racing car than those guys at McLaren. There are five parts to the course: Power Talk. We'll discuss the meaning of a car's performance statistics. For example, what do we mean when we claim our car has 150 bhp? How does it relate to its top speed? Power or Torque? Engine performance is governed by the two numbers: maximum power and maxium torque. Together with the gear box, these determine how fast it accelerates; but should the designer concentrate on increasing power or torque, or simply making the car lighter? The Straights. Tyres are the secret of motorsport sucess. We'll discuss what limits a tyre's ability to grip the road and propel a racing car forwards. `Weight transfer' will explain why F1 cars have their engines at the rear. The Racing Line. What is the quickest route around a corner? The secret is that larger radius turns require the tyres to generate less centripetal force. Skids and Why They Happen. We'll discuss the way the weight of a racing car is balanced between the wheels. Braking or accelerating in a corner shifts the weight distribution and the force a tyre is expected to generate. This leads to a skid. Additional material: Tipler. 1st year Physics course text book. Covers all the physics you need to know. Read this if you're feeling lost. Brian Beckman's web page: http://members.home.net/rck/phor/ This is the inspiration for much of the material in this course. "Tune to Win" by Carroll Smith. Excellent introduction to race car development. Units The units in which we talk about cars often differ from the SI units we conventionally use in Physics. This table gives some examples. The last column gives the typical range of values for a normal road car. 
Comments. Velocity has the same magnitude as speed, but is associated with a direction. A car moving in a circle may have a constant speed, but it has a changing velocity. Mass is often referred to as weight. Weight is the force exerted by a mass due to the earth's gravitational pull. Power (and Torque) are usually quoted as the maximum values. The engine produces less power (torque) if the accelerator pedal is not pressed fully to the floor, or if it is not spinning at the optimal speed (see Part II). In SI units, torque is quoted in Nm, but this must not be confused with Joules. They mean completely different things (see below). . 
Pushing through the Air On level ground and for a given power, the maximum speed is usually set by the drag produced by the air flowing past the car. This is given by 
where v is its speed, A its frontal cross-section area.  is the density of air ( ), and C is a coefficient that measures how slippery the car is. Typically,  .
In these calculations, we've assumed that the maximum power is delivered at any speed we like. In part II, we'll see that the power produced by the engine in fact depends on how fast it spins, so these calculations only work if we choose the ideal set of gear ratios to match the maxium speed and engine revs. F1 racing cars tend to have very high values of , because they use spoilers to push the car down onto the track and increase its cornering speed. We'll cover cornering speed in Part IV. ------------------------- It is mostly theoretical. Toodles Cheers M.Samli Phoenix AZ Gaylant VR4 EVO III GSR (Stolen) Rallies are no place for traitors Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2006 05:19PM by sagsert. |
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