Bsc. Motorsport Technology Project Ideas.

champion

Well Known and Active Forum User
VOC Member
Hello VOC,

Some of you may by now know me, I have been a member of the Kent and Sussex section for a couple of years now since I was 18 years old. Like most of the population aged under 23 I am at university at the moment, studying an Automotive based Bsc Degree at Brookes University, In a small town called Wheatley.

I am looking for some recommendations for possible Projects / dissertations to do next year. My choice was meant to be due in last week, however I am busy revising for my exams this week so told my teachers not to expect anything yet.

Ergo, I wanted to ask anyone who is remotely Engineering based, if they had any recommendations for some good dissertation titles?

Most of my lot either; pick something themselves such as “air flow over a variable wing” or “design and test a set of motorcycle telescopic front forks on the dyno applying relevant dynamic theory.”, or choose to be given a university one, Such as:
· Air flow through a Push bike helmet
· Suspension for a mountain bike
· Joining and manufacture techniques for a pushbike: Bambo to Steel.
· improve the efficiency of a thermo acoustic resonator
· Study the uses of CANBUS for a road car.
· Design an eligible Cylinder head for an Italian 1950s race bike (Is one for M-Eng students.)

I own and can use CAD packages such as SOLIDWORKS and AUTOCAD and am able to do FEA. I would like to learn some CFD I was therefore thinking about doing some CFD and wind tunnel testing of a black knight or Prince as I have some bits of fairing laying around at home as well as many Vin bits and bobs I study a bit of fluid dynamics, fluid mechanics, thermo fluid and thermo dynamics type stuff. I would like to do something relating to Vincent’s as they are incredibly well designed for performance and reliability. Furthermore many members of the club are very knowledgeable of these subjects.

I would like my project to be able to apply modern day knowledge of sciences such as CAD packages and materials to historic technology.
(like the imperial wraith has done with its use of girdrolic front forks made from new light weight materials to replace teles.)

However am not too excited by the prospect of dynamics, so therefore suspension is really a no no. (Which is a shame as I have some telescopic, Brampton’s and girdrolics sitting around at home which I could compare.)

If any race teams (2 or 3 wheelers) have any ideas I would be interested in trying to help develop and test any of your ideas possibly for streamliners or fairings?


Sorry this thread has become a bit wordy but I am a bit bogged down with it (and revision and looking for a summer job) I am trying to talk to my lecturers come up with my own ideas and look externally for ideas but I don’t really know which end to start from.

I basically need a project which will be fairly simple for me to start and research on my own at home over the summer, (so a space station is out the question.) But something which is open ended enough I cannot ever run out of things to discuss and will be able to keep interested in. It will be marked on its engineering / technical content, so plenty of maths physics and formulas.


Alex
 
Last edited:

ET43

Well Known and Active Forum User
Non-VOC Member
Hello Champion,
How about designing a reverse trike, and comparing it to a normal motorcycle combination, ie, frontal area, coefficient of drag, weight ( as a whole ) of both, weight distribution over the wheels and projected performance of both with the same power unit. When you have done all that you will see why the thing I am building is taking so long, especially in the suspension department, and please do not even mention steering!
Cheers, ET43
 

rapcom

Well Known and Active Forum User
VOC Member
And if you could work out why some enclosed Series Ds sway at high speeds and others don't......
 

timetraveller

Well Known and Active Forum User
VOC Member
Hi there young Champion, what a wonderful idea to apply some CFD to some of the Vincent design. The Series 'D' sounds really interesting but what I used to find, following Rapcom's comments, is that having a pillion passenger helped a lot with the swaying and I suspect that it is not just the front end which is involved but also the side winds, generated by turbulence from the front end, hitting the sides of the rear end which are involved. If you do go down this route will you need a scan of a complete enclosed 'D' to use as the basis for a model? Alternatively if CFD is your thing how about gas flow into and through the inlet tract although this might have been worked to death empirically!
 

champion

Well Known and Active Forum User
VOC Member
I have just written up a draft proposal, which I have kept as vague as possible to say basically I will be doing CFD / wind tunnel testing of motorcycles, aiming at modern and historic fairing'ed and non fairinged.
(then I can pretty much go in any dirrection.)

Yes I will somehow need to get some CAD models drawn up of the bikes I want to test, I have a rapid prototyper or am thinking about buying an ebay model off fleabay if they have any good ones at a scale which fit in our wind tunnel dimmensions are approx 300mm x 250mm
 

timetraveller

Well Known and Active Forum User
VOC Member
I was at the Spares Company AGM on Saturday and no one there has ever see a model of an enclosed 'D'. Therefor it looks as though you are going to have to have access to a modern scanner. It would probably suffice to have a hand held one as a complete scan of bike plus rider only needs to be accurate to a millimeter or even more. We can probably find a volunteer with a bike. Can you get access to a laser scanner and the software to turn it into a CAD file and then the rapid prototyping gadget to make a scaled model? You might even be able to sell a few models!!
 

champion

Well Known and Active Forum User
VOC Member
thank you for asking, I can not find one either.


As far as I am aware we do not have a scanner at university...
Some of my freinds have made Mk 1 LandRovers, Mark 3 Spitfires and all sorts I will ask them how they drew them in solidworks.

Champion
 

timetraveller

Well Known and Active Forum User
VOC Member
Phil. Mr ET43 managed to put the item copied below on to the Spare’s Company Open day thread so I am copying it below to maintain continuity. I expect he is just trying to see if we are still awake!!.
1.
Hi Champion and Norman, without wishing to speak out of turn, last night I had supper with Bob Baker who told me that he had recently met a chap who he had worked with a long time ago and who had made a model enclosed series D with working suspension. He is hot on the trail of said model, but please do not hold your breath as it was a long time ago.
Cheers, ET43


Thanks Phil, that is potentially very helpful. If the model cannot be found then perhaps the manufacturers of the hand held scanners might like to demonstrate one to a bunch of bright young undergraduate engineers who will one day certainly want to use them.
 
Top