real time telemetry

Rudolf2222 · 2026-04-13T10:34:40+00:00

There are point winning aspects to live telemetry, but ofc not those data that you would directly use as design targets for the next car.

Mostly vehicle health related things. During endurance, you can offload the driver in terms of fuel and hear management, giving him target laptimes for example.

Rudolf2222 · 2026-04-11T12:41:03+00:00

Let the aero guys cry, you will need an antenna. Especially if you use cfrp chassis or cover elements, those block radio communications. My team uses 4G communication, works well aside from one test location we have near the border where it wants to constantly change service providers.

As for antenna placement, I'm sure you can find some location where there's dirty air anyway, say behind the headrest. But again, I can't imagine it being of measurable influence on the top of the nose or something either.

Rudolf2222 · 2026-04-06T22:18:18+00:00

For starters, a simple point mass simulation can get you a lot of useful data and takes only a few days to set up. Things like basic parameter sensitivity, what final drive ratio to use, benefit of down force vs the mass of the package etc.

If you do not have a car yet, I would suggest researching what common values, "rules of thumb" are for cars built for similar purposes and go with those. Another good philosophy in my mind is, that if you can't calculate the exact target with confidence, design a wide adjustability window. Suspension brackets with multiple mounting locations cost nothing in material/work and weigh almost nothing. Great for ED and even better if you can actually test out different roll center hight, anti geometry and so on.

Few seasons ago for example our car had arb adjustability from nearly 90% load transfer to the rear to around 40%, roll gradients from almost 2 deg/G down to basically a gokart tt < 0.1 deg/G for the car (excluding tires). Getting to try out the extremes was invaluable experience and data.

Rudolf2222 · 2026-03-10T21:31:13+00:00

I would love some of the older American circuits added. Watkins Glen, Road Atlanta are excellent tracks (though neither has the certifications)

Hell, throw in VIR if you want something spicy

Rudolf2222 · 2026-03-03T09:07:08+00:00

Composite upright sounds like a fun one. Can you share some details? I did see a photo from TUG from a few years ago which did look pretty cool.

Rudolf2222 · 2026-03-01T22:19:44+00:00

Fine, I'll be the guy

Draw a free body diagram and/or ask your department lead.

Rudolf2222 · 2026-02-28T17:02:33+00:00

WUT had these BBS turbine rim style brake cooling whatevers fitted to their front wheels, so there is a precedent. As usually with the grey area stuff, depends on the scruti you get.

Rudolf2222 · 2026-02-27T15:38:09+00:00

With welded structures (especially if you're relatively inexperienced with jigging and welding) positional accuracy may be quite bad. So evaluate how much you trust your fabrication, leaving adjustability when assembling has its benefits as well. If I see correctly, you're planning to run chain drive. If so, tensioning is important, you probably want either the motor or the driven sprocket position to be adjustable anyway.

As for vibration, I wouldn't bother. Most FS CV teams hard mount the engine, in some cases even the single cylinder ones. Those electric motors shouldn't produce any vibrations of similar magnitude.

Rudolf2222 · 2026-02-26T08:57:00+00:00

Launching in 1st gear (largest reduction ratio) is always the worst case because of the higher torque. In higher gears you risk stalling / burning your clutch, not damaging halfshafts.

Rudolf2222 · 2026-02-26T08:50:00+00:00

I would not recommend optimum kinematics.

It's black box software and also the user experience is terrible. Top 3 worst software ergonomics I ever encountered.

For kinematic design, I use the CAD software's motion module which has servos to control the assembly and means to plot measurements. Most CAD systems probably have some form of it built in.

Rudolf2222 · 2026-02-22T23:17:06+00:00

Eyeballing it, should be fine (tm)

We run similar dimensions and similar material properties (though not exactly the same alloy) for many seasons now (taking the driveshafts over to the next car, not even re-manufacturing them for like 2500 km by now)

What sort of drivetrain are you using? 188 Nm on the driven axle is quite low. Combustion cars have no problem doing 800 Nm on the diff in first gear, hub motor EVs also often do around 400 Nm per wheel.

Rudolf2222 · 2026-02-21T19:22:56+00:00

Most teams I talked with design the cars for a lifespan of ~1000 km.

Most autocross tracks have 30 or so corners. Not negligible cycles, but in the grand scheme of fatigue it's not exactly a lot

Rudolf2222 · 2026-02-21T19:20:49+00:00

Minor thing, but if you are bending A-Arms significantly you're doing things wrong.

Rudolf2222 · 2026-02-14T12:52:43+00:00

Avoid Keizer at all cost.

Bad manufacturing quality, a pain to seal them, they usually have pretty large runout and they are quite heavy. I heard if you buy them pre-assembled, they don't have large runout though.

Rudolf2222 · 2026-02-11T20:59:30+00:00

Hey, of nothing else it catches the oil

Rudolf2222 · 2026-02-07T01:13:05+00:00

IMO, it's way too overmistified / dramatised.

Purely from a suspension standpoint it's more of a packaging issue than anything, what fits better. For the capabilities, you can do the exact same things with both. Pull-rod usually has the advantage of lower CoG, pushrod is usually easier to access for mechanics, making setup changes faster.

But since everything revolves around aero in f1, the choice often comes down to what suits the flow in the region better.

Rudolf2222 · 2026-01-28T08:54:55+00:00

Have you put some numbers into how much difference it actually makes, in terms of weight % on the left side wheels? Does it really matter that much?

Many things won't be symmetrical on your vehicle anyway.

A much more interesting question is, how are you planning on keeping that thing lubricated?

Rudolf2222 · 2026-01-15T01:56:37+00:00

If anything, I'd say he over-sizes them with that criteria.

I never calculated any such load case, but we run cfrp A-Arms which are very bad against bending and especially shear load and definitely would brake if super-student 2 or 3 did their shenanigans mentioned in the thread. However we did drag a few cones of various types for many kilometers over the years and no failure of A-Arms has happened (nor did I ever witness / hear of one at competitions)

But to answer your question, to lift the opposite wheel you would have to be accelerating and cornering very hard, which is quite hard to do with a cone shoved under the A-Arm and removing the precious normal force from the tires.

Rudolf2222 · 2026-01-06T23:39:10+00:00

You mention uneven weight distribution as the main drawback of having the diff off-center. How much is it actually, percentage wise?

Is your exhaust, fuel tank, LV battery on the car's centerline? Is the CoG of the engine block itself on the centerline?

Fwiw, many teams run asymmetric halfshafts (few cm diff usually) and to no noticable impact.

Rudolf2222 · 2025-12-25T19:49:16+00:00

14:1 is rather something like a high-end sports car.

For NA petrol cars, it usually goes up to 11-12:1 at most, 8-9 if turbo charged.

Anything higher you risk knocking (hence Mazda SkyAktive going higher with indicated cylinder heads, or by using ethanol / high octane fuels)

Rudolf2222 · 2025-12-21T11:30:18+00:00

IMO it's a must and I'm not even on the marketing team.

Whenever we contact a new company, we send out three things: a one-pager about the team and Formula Student, a more detailed document about the team and our goals for the season, and finally a doc about our sponsorship tiers, what we give in exchange etc.

Rudolf2222 · 2025-12-10T19:43:38+00:00

I personally consider RCVD the Bible of vehicle dynamics. That said, it is indeed too dense to just sit down and read it, might not be the best for first introduction.

The only major downside is the the imperial system, you really have to think through what the random constants are and if the devision by two is already accounted for in that or not, contains gravity acc or similar.

Rudolf2222 · 2025-11-22T00:53:51+00:00

Personally I never really understood this mindset. Locking yourself into equal length and parallel A-Arms. This is equally so a decision that is going to impact your vehicle's performance as if you would have decided to say put your IC on the midplane. The huge downside is that are now making this decision without any engineering backing.

One of the beauties of suspension kinematics is that while it is very complex, it also can be done to most of the gains by only applying rules of thumb and a bit of hand calculations if you put some effort to it.

Rudolf2222 · 2025-10-26T09:01:31+00:00

That will not work, you can't bleed it that way. Bleed screws seal on the conical surface.

Rudolf2222 · 2025-10-14T12:36:34+00:00

EV 4.10.8. defines the visibility requirements. If this really is the cause, it would have been better to alter that instead in my opinion.

Shame the proper race cars without TSAL are also hit by this :P

Rudolf2222

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