- Welcome to today's member's webinar guys.
I'm Tim from RaceCraft and today we're going to get stuck into looking at some math
channels in the context of data analysis.
Before we get started with the actual lesson today, I just want to go through a little bit
of pre show, give you guys a little bit of an update about what's been happening
around the place for us.
So in the last webinar I went through, I talked through that we were going to be installing
MoTeC's V2 camera system into our RaceCraft
GT86 shop car.
So I got that installed during last week and we managed to get it out on track and
do a little bit of a run and I just wanted to give you guys, show you guys on my
laptop screen what that data looks like now that we've got the video system
set up to be synchronised with the data.
So if we just head across to my laptop screen for a second here.
I've actually got a video tab set up.
So what we've got here in the top right is just some generic log data that we gathered
on Friday, this is just some really basic stuff, engine speed, vehicle speed,
throttle and brake and gear position here.
But the new addition for this particular car was to add in the MoTeC camera system,
so there's lots of different camera systems you can use.
A lot of people particularly at maybe the more budget friendly end of the spectrum, you can
use things like GoPros and stuff and you can do manual synchronisation between
your data and your video.
There's really great, either free or cheap tools that can help you do that for you as well,
help you synchronise your data and your video.
The beauty of buying maybe something slightly more higher end like something like MoTeC make
or PI, from Cosworth is that all of that synchronisation is done for you, there's no
post processing work involved with synchronising it and the really nice thing
about that, it's one less step to complete during a race weekend and it just really speeds
up your analysis process, means you can load the data and go straight into getting into
analysis without having to mess around with the data before you sit down with
your driver and go through the data.
So I just want to show you an example of what's going on here.
As I move the cursor through the lap, you can see that the video's automatically updating
through the lap which is really nice if I just scan through, it shows, it's exactly where
we are on track in the video in the top left and I can really easily correlate that
with the log data.
Now one of the times that becomes really important or really helpful is when you're
comparing 2 different drivers, particularly from the perspective of driving lines.
So driving lines is something you can look at in the log data.
Sometimes you can make use of GPS data although that can be a little bit
flakey sometimes.
Other times you can use cornering radiuses and a few lateral G calculations to understand
how the car's being driven differently in the corner but when it comes to video
there's absolutely no arguing or question about where you are on track.
If you've got the in car video you can see exactly where the car was at every point
on track so it can be really useful.
So in the same way that, if I just come over to my data, on the side here.
In the same way I can select a lap to overlay and it'll give me an overlay on the log data,
it also gives me the exact same overlay in the video as well and both of these are
perfectly synchronised together.
So the beauty of this being sychronised together, obviously it's being synchronised
over distance so the position I click on on the data means you're going to be locking
onto the exact same position on track with the camera.
So if you had a specific disparity or an area on track you wanted to look at the
difference in, you can come along to the video and see really quickly, if the car was positioned
maybe 1 driver has turned in early or one driver's taken a lot more curve than the
other, it can just be a really nice reference.
So if I just get rid of that overlay for a second, you can see on the top left,
one of the nice features, and a lot of the camera manufacturers will do this for you,
whether it's a camera manufacturer that comes from the same supplier that's
selling you your data system or whether it's something completely different,
something like a GoPro, there's always the ability to be able to overlay some sort of
heads up display which is what we've got shown in the top left here.
So in this case we've got the gear, we've got a GG plot, it's maybe a little bit small for
you guys to see there but when you're looking at this in full screen it's a bit
easier.
In fact, I can do that right there.
And then the lap number, then we've got some lap times here, the current speed
and the throttle and brake as well which is just a really nice reference.
If you're just watching the video by itself, there's quite a lot of information there,
if you're already doing a comparison by yourself.
The beauty of this system as well, which is the same as many systems,
you don't actually need to have the data analysis package open to view it,
it's also available as an individual video file.
So you can just give it to a driver or someone that doesn't know how to use
their data analysis package, because of that nested data in the top left there,
they can just use any computer to view that video and they can already start to do a little
bit of their own basic analysis straight away.
So I think that's a nice addition to the RaceCraft car.
In addition to that we've also got the VBOX system which is a similar system, maybe a
little more low end, a little more entry level, but we've got the VBOX system fitted in there.
The beauty of the VBOX system, not only does it log data as well, it actually has 2 video
inputs.
So actually looking at the MoTeC screen here on my laptop again, we've actually got one
of the VBOX cameras actually in shot so there's one of them that's got a forward looking view
and we've got this one here that I've highlighted which is actually rearward
looking back at the driver.
Which again is just to give a little bit more context about what was going on with the
driver, can be helpful particularly in a video coaching situation.
In addition to that, the third logging system, so we've got the MoTeC, we've got the VBOX,
we've got a third logging system which is an AiM which is a little bit more of a
portable solution which is something that just bolts to the dash, that does have an option
to have a camera with it but that's not something we're using at the moment.
So certainly that car's getting relatively heavily instrumented now and that's really
all just to help us generate material for our data logging courses.
In particular some worked examples with lots of different systems for you guys.
One of the other things that's been going on around the shop, same with the, it's the same
car with the RaceCraft GT86, we've been installing a surge tank in it.
So we have had, a fuel surge tank I should say, we have had a few problems
lately with the car surging when the tank hasn't got enough fuel in it.
So this is something that's been getting worse and worse with this car as we
end up increaseing the performance and particularly lately, now that we've started
running Michelin slicks on it which are a bit of a step up from the semi slick that was
run on it in the past, this fuel surge issue is getting even worse so we've been getting
the guys in the workshop to fit a fuel surge tank to the back of the car.
It already had some upgrades in the tank to help with the fuel surge but now this is just
more of a serious solution with an external surge tank which will allow us
to run the tank much lower and I've actually got a picture up here on my laptop screen
that I took yesterday when I was walking through the workshop.
So this is, this black tank here is, it's actually sitting upside down on the bench,
the guys are halfway through installing it at the moment.
But essentially this is a completely separate tank from the main fuel tank.
The idea is that out of the main fuel tank, rather than the original pump pumping to the
fuel rail at the front, we reroute that into the surge tank, so the first thing that
gets filled out of the main tank is the surge tank.
Then the surge tank, it's got its own separate high flow pump which is what
you see here, which is attached to the surge tank.
That then runs to the fuel rail and then with the fuel rail, rather than being returned to the
main tank, instead it actually returns to the surge tank.
So the idea here is that we're trying to keep the surge tank as full as possible all of the time
and you can see, obviously this thing's sitting upside down but you've got this whole body
of the tank here but this section down the back here is obviously he lowest part and
that is the part that is going to be feeding that new pump that's going in the back.
So that's been a little bit of a challenge for the guys to package that.
Inevitably in these road cars where there's already a lot of equipment in them and it's
usually quite a challenge to fit something into the car itself, fit something new, there's always
something in the way, it's always a massive compromise, this was no exception to that
so the guys have been making a bracket and getting that fitted into the car and that'll be
getting plumbed hopefully tomorrow so we can get it back out on track and hopefully
we've improved that fuel surging issue.
The other, one of the other projects that's been going on in the workshop is our other
GT86 which is our SR20VET powered, what we're calling our SR86.
Which is the cooling project has been continuing so I think in the last webinar
I talked a little bit about the ducting.
If we just switch over to the overhead cam here, I'll show you guys the ducting updates
we've been doing.
So I think I had this in the last webinar.
What's happening here is this is the, the oil cooler, the main oil cooler for the
engine is sitting here and that is obviously a pretty square profile so we've already got
a duct that's coming off the back of that oil cooler which is running into this
profile here.
So the idea here is that this face here will face the oil cooler and this is going to
have a foam tape around it and it's going to seal against the oil cooler.
And then this face here is at the outlet of the bumper.
So the way this is actually positioned in the car is this is the front wheel, so this is the
front of the car in this direction, this is the front of the front left tyre in this case.
So that kind of follows the angle of the guard and this is kind of just packaged into a bit
of free space that we've got on the side of the outlet of the bumper.
So this whole duct is going to be bolted to the guard itself.
So this is going to have, there's a secondary piece that's going to go on the outside
that's going to have a gurney as well.
The idea behind the gurney is it'll just create a bit of a low pressure area in
the area of the outlet of the duct which is what we want to help draw air
through the oil cooler.
But this essentially bolts to the inside of the bumper.
So this whole system, when the bumper comes off, which is, the bumper itself's actually on
quick release pins, this whole thing comes out of the car and that's why this system,
we're not actually going to have bolt holes as shown on here, this is actually going to
be sitting on a sealed foam flange that sits against the oil cooler.
So the idea is it's going to come on and off without having to be unbolted off
the car.
Sorry off the oil cooler.
We've had a revision, so since we've test fitted this to the car, and this is always a
little bit the case when it comes to building parts like this where you don't
have a full 3D scan of the car, it's always a case of taking a few measurements,
going back and forward, taking your best guess, printing it and then once you've
printed it you've actually got a reference to start measuring some positions to see
how far you are out on dimensions and angles and stuff like that.
So based on that we've gone to a different version.
So the main difference to the first version is that looking overhead, we've actually
increased the amount of angle here.
So we needed to point this oil cooler face a little bit more towards the oil cooler.
I've obviously deleted those bolt holes as this is now just going to be sitting
hard against the oi cooler passively.
Now this is not the, this is far from the final version.
The position of the flange, this is relatively final but it's actually,
you can kind of see through the, best way to see it through there,
you can see through the, looking through the front there, there's this big step
that comes in and you can kind of see it probably best from the outside,
you can see this big crease running through here.
So this is really not a great thing from an airflow perspective.
The direction of the flow is from this flange here and this is the outlet that comes out
of here.
So the air coming through this part of the duct and out here, we really don't want any
really steep corners or big changes of section, any rapid changes of section,
this is where you end up with a lot of separation, you'll end up with a big
dead patch in the flow here which is obviously something we don't want because
we're trying to maximise the flow here.
So while the position of the flange is good, we're going to have to go back and
do a little bit of tweaking on the loft we've got running from this face to
this face.
It's obviously a relatively complex loft, we're going from this quite simple shape
here on this plane through to something that's on a really different plane in both
vertically, horizontally and angle wise and through to a completely different shape
so it is a relatively complicated loft but we're just going to have to do a little bit more
work in CAD to get that loft going a bit smoother to get rid of this junction
here, that's something we want to avoid.
So that's going to be a little bit of an ongoing project to get that working
properly in the car.
So this week we had a really great video come out talking about Formula SAE or
what's called Formula Student in some parts of the world, carbon monocoque
tub being built.
So we did a series of interviews at the rear end of last year where I went and talked
to a couple of local Formula Student teams.
Any of you guys that aren't familiar with Formula Student, it's essentially a University
competition where people build small Formula style racecars and they get
together and race them and it's a huge, it's a massive competition, it's an international
competition and the standard of cars is typically very high, lots of really interesting
stuff to look at on the cars.
If I just head across to my laptop screen again I've got that video loaded up here.
So this is one of the cars we talked about in the interview.
This is a full carbon monocoque chassis.
So typically Formula SAE cars in the past, what they used to be built from was steel
space frames, so a pretty old school way of building a car.
These days almost all teams, certainly all the top teams would be building building full
carbon monocoques.
So carbon monocoques isn't something that is typically accessible to most of us building cars
in our own sheds or workshops.
It's something that you definitely see at the highest ends of motorsport,
so obviously Formula 1, the high ended sports cars with prototypes and lots of single
seaters, whether ti's modern Formula 3, Formula 4, certain GP2, Formula 2,
stuff like that, these are the kind of levels of cars that are typically being built in
carbon monocoque.
Carbon monocoque for any of you guys that aren't exactly sure what that is,
essentially it's a sandwich material, so you've got a carbon skin on the inside,
followed by a core material which can be made up of different choices,
whether it's a honeycomb or an aluminium or an aramid style core and
then an outer skin.
So inner skin, core, outer skin, the inner and outers are carbon typically and that
inner skin, the purpose of that, sorry that inner section in the middle, the core
material is to give a separation between those 2, the 2 parts of the core.
So the 2 parts of the carbon and the idea is that it gives you a lot more bending
resistance, gives you a lot of stiffness for not a lot of weight.
So this was a really, I thought this was a really interesting interview we went through.
It was Ben from UCM that talked us through, both from project management perspective for
what's actually involved in making this things right from making the moulds
through to the different materials they use and why they use different materials
at each point.
I thought it was a really interesting interview and if you guys are interested in learning about
some, I would say relatively high tech chassis manufacturing techniques, I definitely encourage
you guys to go and check that out.
The forum is again being relatively active at the moment.
I'm spending quite a lot of time on there every day with people asking really great
questions.
I just want to skip across there, I'll jump across to my laptop screen and we'll go through
a couple that I had recently.
There's actually one that was actually on the question about some cooling and duct
work so I'm not sure if I spoke about it in the previous webinar but we did a video on basic
ducting design.
So the idea being having a diverging and converging, so diverging on the inlet
and converging on the outlet duct design to help maximise the cooling
efficiency of the car and there are a couple of, you can find that on YouTube
and I think probably also on our Instagram as well.
But essentially we had someone here asking, I talked quite extensively in the video
about the inlet duct design.
I did actually end up glossing over the outlet duct design and we had Michael here ask a
question of what are the rules, I gave some rules of thumb for how the inlet should
typically be designed and typically work but he was asking how does the outlet
work, what sort of rules of thumb are there and the answer is really, it's really similar
to what's happening on the inlet side.
It's just essentially on the reverse.
So on the inlet side we're trying to slow the flow down by expanding the duct
as it approaches the heat exchanger and on the outlet we're doing the
opposite so we're converging it back down.
And the idea is that we're trying to recover some of the kinetic energy.
We want ideally for the whole ducting system to work properly, the flow going through
the car, which is going through our heat exchangers.
And the point we're it exits out of the car, we roughly want the speed of the
flow exiting out of the car to be similar to what's happening in the air that's
flowing over top of the car.
That's when we get the most efficiency from a drag perspective and it's also
it helps draw the air through the ducting as well.
So that was just Michael's question there and there was a little bit of discourse
back and forward on that.
So if you're interested in a little more, bit of a discussion about the ducting stuff,
I definitely recommend you go and check out that post, that was posted under the
general section and then in the cooling package duct work if you're interested in
going and checking that out.
So we've still got a couple more courses in development that are going to be coming
out soon, we've got our advanced data analysis course which ties in well to what we're going
to be talking today about math channels and we've also got our driving fundamentals course,
race driving fundamentals course which is currently in production.
We haven't started filming it yet but we are hoping to have it out pretty soon so
definitely keep an eye out for those ones if you're interested guys.
So that's the end of the pre show for today, we'll cut it off there and I will be back in
a second and we will get into the lesson talking about math channels.
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