race action: World Solar Challenge and aero

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by AeroMcAeroFace

Surely all the solar challenges can't be only students?
You want ultra LRR tyres? Your team needs to be personally sponsored by a tyre company, who then charge you quite a lot for the tyres that only last 200 miles.

Unless ecomodder suddenly gets millions of funding, it isn't happening. Shell ecomarathon is slightly more realistic but still wildly optimistic

The HONDA Dream solar race teams consisted of young engineers, at HONDA R&D. I think HOXAN did the same thing.
There may be different categories, like University, or Corporate.
There is the 'Cruiser-Class' which is a separate entity, with separate specifications, closer to 'actual' motor vehicles.
The North American Solar Challenge contestants have been provided tires gratis, getting free advertising for the tire-maker during the competition.
I believe, Bridgestone, Michelin, and Schwalbe all do this.
At Bonneville, you cannot 'own' a set of GOODYEAR racing tires. One can only 'lease' them, and must return them for destruction after the term of the lease, except for 'museum' display.

[Isaac Zachary]

Didn't GM also participate in solar races before (reference, Who Killed the Electric Car?)

[aerohead]

Absolutely! Their GM/AeroVironment Sunraycer of 1987 sorta, single-handedly redefined the solar race car.
Sunraycer was reported by Cal Tech to be the lowest drag land vehicle ever measured. Below Cd 0.1165.
I've heard as low as Cd 0.089 with wheel fairings. Cd 0.125 as-raced. And later, GM claimed Cd 0.147, but I think that this is a crosswind averaged Cd, based upon changing SAE protocols.
After 1987, GM provided Magna-Quench motor technology to teams, as well as access to their GM-owned Hughes Aerospace VSAERO, CFD software.
Many teams, including HONDA just copied Sunraycer for the 1990 race season.
Paul MacCready, of AeroVironment, calculated that with a modest ICE powerplant, Sunraycer would be good for 400-mpg, and their 'Impact' BEV, 100-mpg.
The 1991 GM Ultralite had the Impact aerodynamics, and did 100-mpg @ 50-mph.
GM's Oldsmobile AEROTECH long-tail set a closed-course land speed record, with AJ Foyt behind the wheel.
All of these cars, and other GM concepts have inspired my projects.

[jakobnev]

Unless ecomodder suddenly gets millions of funding, it isn't happening.

I think this is closer to our budget:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mF2bdmHCQY

[aerohead]

' Like a soup made from the shadow of a crow that starved to death.' Abraham Lincoln

[freebeard]

Autobahnschleicher -- Perhaps I'm the only one to take you seriously.

It would be fun to try and fail. How's about relocate to Bonneville Salt Flats? It's closer to you than Australia as far as I know. And members have been known to appear there. Bonnevile's a hoot. The first time I was there we met a guy who bought an old pickup truck and threw his motorcycle in the back and headed toward Bonneville knowing he needed a crew he didn't have. The guy he recruited has ridden his own Ducati there at 160 MPH and was on the salt flats in Bolivia last I heard.

So grassroots racing can happen.

It's all fun until you actually have to build something and put it in the field. Someone here could crunch some numbers. They seem to favor steam for external combustion.

A vacuum tube of the necessary capacity could be made from an acrylic tube 36" in diameter, slump molded in a [rented] infrared lamp bank and then inverted and placed on the back of an aero-Template tricycle (for cheaper tires*). aerohead knows how to fillet the wheel openings, see his Baby Template.

*witness that Max Balchowsky ran Buick station wagon tires on Old Yeller II against Ferraris and their ilk.

[freebeard]

So I've been thinking about this. It's a North-South race during a solar day. Four wheels are a class requirement.

So.... An arcylic tube long enough to contain the allowance of solar panels in a linear area. IDK what the allotment is, maybe 3x21 feet? 2x25? Anyway, the long array tracks the sun morning to evening inside the tube. The four wheels are staggered and extremely cambered inside a single blister in front and back. Motorcycle tires with a variable pressure system.


https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthre...tml#post489465

Driver is supine in the diameter of the tube plus the visibility requirement. The solar cells operating in a partial vacuum would have a cooling jacket feeding a low-temperature Stirling engine to capture all the light the PV cells reject.

The tube could could have front and rear bogeys so it would look like a little log truck.

[freebeard]

So it would be a delta, with smoll front wheels and bigger back wheels spread apart like a quasi-trike, with fins. Long wheel-base for fineness ratio and minimize the stagger in the front wheels. With the transparent tube in the middle it would look like an arrow. Smaller tube backbone frame and the solar array rolls across the top.

The driver is seated at the back slingshot style for control authority and there's four-wheel steering to insure it's never driving sideways, even a little bit.

What do you think, sirs?

[JulianEdgar]

Originally Posted by freebeard

So it would be a delta, with smoll front wheels and bigger back wheels spread apart like a quasi-trike, with fins. Long wheel-base for fineness ratio and minimize the stagger in the front wheels. With the transparent tube in the middle it would look like an arrow. Smaller tube backbone frame and the solar array rolls across the top.

The driver is seated at the back slingshot style for control authority and there's four-wheel steering to insure it's never driving sideways, even a little bit.

What do you think, sirs?

I think a good starting point would be to read the race rules, read about the cars that have won the race over the last few decades, perhaps talk to some solar team members, maybe have a chat with someone who has done the aero for these cars, and perhaps read this book.

[freebeard]

I have enough trouble trying to get people to talk with me about tiny houses. And who's rulebook, Solar Challenge or SCTA?

I'm not going to Australia, the women are too hot. And I hear there're spiders.