Motorsport Engineering Project

[Macca]

Howdy Boys and Girls.

So the time has come where I have to do my Project/Dissertation for the last year at uni. The project can be absolutely anything but obviously has to relate to Motorsport its self.

We don’t have to propose any ideas of project until the end of next week, but I’m ****ing stumped. So many possibility’s and I just don’t know what route to go down

Projects can be anything from Full race car builds to designing and tackling problems of parts and other problems.

Anyone care to help out and give me a few ideas to what I could have a go at?


Also keeping it Honda would be great because it’s a ideal interest

 

[Kozy]

You want to build? Or research?

Research gets looked on favourably over people that simply throw money at their car to make it faster for 'no reason'.

I did research into the Revetec engine for mine. Modelled it up in CAD then analysed its characteristics to evaluate it's use as a racing engine. Cost me nothing (more money for coke and hookers y0!) yet I walked away with the best score in the class.

Also consider what you want to do as a job. A good, valid research/design project will get you further in job applications if you want to be an engineer, a build will be better if you want to go down the technician route.

Why not look into optimising the suspension geometry of an Civic race car? Analyse the stock car, model its characteristics, camber/toe curves, bump/roll steer, anti-roll geometry, roll centre migration yada yada. Pick holes in the stock setup, identify strengths and optimise it for a given track. That would be my project. I can give you a lot of help if you want to go down that route too.

 

[Weasel]

Heres a particular area i think you should focus on but it may require a lot of research and it relates specifically to Honda's which are under hard race condition:
Driveshaft/CV joint reliability under the following conditions:
Running slick tyres with hardened engine mounts and an agressive clutch.
The drives/CV joints are normally the first things to fail as they are the weakest part. During this years touring championship one driver replaced 8 shafts and he blamed it specifically on slick tyres which were basically pulling the joints apart and enforcing huge amounts of stress on the shafts.
The funny thing is that the original Honda shaft seems to be the best and that many other drivers wont even think of purchasing yonaka or hasport shafts because they are worse!
Devise an experiment to see what the stress tolerances on the shafts/joints are and see if there is any way of improving the design.

Tough ask, but if you can design and patent a better shaft and prove that it will last you will make ££££££££££!!!!

 

[Macca]

Kozy that sounds great dude.

Ide definatley love to talk to you more about those ideas and others.

PM me your email address chap.

 

[SiW]

Great suggestions above ^^

Whatever you do don't just start a project that involves building something/designing something for your car. As said, it cost's a LOT and the institution won't be keen on it. They want new ideas, even if they're ****..As long as your doing research and verifying it to a certain extent

The driveshafts would be an excellent project, it has a clear market and could have strong advantages over other products. So you already have a great reason to start research. Depending on what equipment you have at uni experimental testing should yield some conclusive data to work from...then you've cracked it.

If that sort of thing isn't the road you want to go down there are plenty other sorts of project to choose. Structural re-organisation of a motorsport team and management characteristics would be a heavy but excellent project in terms of what institutions want to see...showing clear concise understanding of the finance and structure behind running a motorsport team.. Or something similar.. Doesn't always have to be designing/building a product or enhancing a product..Can be very much about process

At the end of the day it's all down to you...What area are you keen and competent at? Have you got a preferred field?

 

[Kozy]

Kozy that sounds great dude.

Ide definatley love to talk to you more about those ideas and others.

PM me your email address chap.

Pm'd.

I remember my tutor at uni saying that you could write the worlds best dissertation on spark plugs. Obviously you would have to be incredibly **** to do that, but he's right. You could pick literally any component on a race car and break it down to core principals, analyse the **** out of it and find ways to improve.

Tyres physics and aerodynamics are surefire way into a good job if you can crack it. Write a first class dissertation in one of those and you could be seeing plenty of interviews from the upper echelons of motorsport. They are definately not subjects for the feint hearted though.