Student
Resources

MONTHLY TIP

To finish first, you must first finish. Think reliability before you think performance.

OPTIMUMG BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

Want to up your game? Here are the current top 10 book recommendations from our OptimumG engineers.

RACE CAR VEHICLE DYNAMICS

BY WILLIAM F. MILLIKEN & DOUGLAS L. MILLIKEN

Automotive Handbook

by Robert Bosch GmbH

Aerodynamics of Road Vehicles

by Wolf Heinrich Hocho

Race Car Aerodynamics, designing for speed

by Joseph Katz

Data Power

by Buddy Fey

Competition Car Data logging

by Simon Mcbeath

Analysis Techniques for Racecar Data Acquisition

by Jorge Segers

Engineer to win

by Carroll Smith

Prepare to Win

by Carroll Smith

Vehicle Dynamics: Theory and Application

by Reza N. Jazar

Theory of Ground Vehicles

by J. Y. Wong

Fundamentals of Vehicle Dynamics

by Thomas D. Gillepsie

Resources

OptimumG Announces New Software Pricing

OptimumG Announces New Software Pricing

OptimumG announced this week their move towards a subscription based software licensing on all of their software solutions including OptimumKinematics, OptimumTire and OptimumDynamics. This move was done in order to stay true to their company’s mission. OptimumG’s...

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Characterising tracks for set-up solutions

Characterising tracks for set-up solutions

OptimumG’s Claude Rouelle explains why, and where, you might want to make use of an asymmetric set-up on your racecar. Having difficulties convincing someone to use more camber on the right-hand side than on the left for a counter-clockwise circuit; running higher tyre pressure on one side than the other; using different damper settings?

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The four secrets for chassis happiness

The four secrets for chassis happiness

Claude Rouelle explores the possibilities of qualifying and quantifying a racecar design or set-up through grip, balance, control and stability. In the racing industry, I often find engineers that perform simulations in the same way barmen create cocktails: by (sometimes randomly) mixing ingredients and varying quantities until they eventually find something that matches their taste.

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Getting more from  your yaw diagrams

Getting more from your yaw diagrams

Our analysis of yaw versus lateral acceleration continues with Claude Rouelle’s explanation of the yaw moment diagram and how to interpret it. We will start this article by reviewing some basic concepts. As we have seen in the previous articles on the yaw moment versus lateral acceleration method, an understeering car is defined as a car that doesn’t have enough yaw moment and an oversteering car is a car with too much yaw moment.

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Slide rules: analysing  an oversteering car

Slide rules: analysing an oversteering car

What makes a car quick in steady state and in transient? Claude Rouelle develops his analysis of lateral acceleration and yaw moment variation. In April’s RE (V27N4), we saw that there are 12 causes for the yaw moment: four tyre lateral forces Fy, four tyre longitudinal forces Fx; and four tyre self-alignment moments Mz.

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Advice for SAE Teams