First actively controlled race car from the Politecnico di Milano
The Formula Student Team of the Politecnico di Milano has great plans. In the coming race season they want to compete in the Formula Student events in UK and Italy with a race car having totally automated gear changing and actively steered rear wheels. The Italian students use CarMaker and IPG-KINEMATICS to develop and test the control systems and the newly designed suspension.
The Dynamis Team of the Politecnico di Milano consists of about 20 students, one Ph.D. and three supervisor professors. It was founded in 2004 and in the same year participated in their first Formula Student event - a Class 3 challenge in the UK. Class 3 is a basic entry class for teams that are totally new to Formula Student competitions and are still at an early stage of design, manufacture, and construction of their vehicle. The team showed their quality in the following years, attending the Class 1 (top class) of the Formula Student competitions and winning the 7th place for the overall performance in the Italian FSAE (Formula SAE) race 2006 where they finished the endurance competition and the auto-cross races in 1st place of all the Italian teams.
This year, Milan's students will try to be even more successful. While the first vehicle built up at the Politecnico di Milano was a passive prototype to strengthen the abilities of the students and the technicians, the ambitious aim for the coming season is to incorporate active devices. The new car, which will attend the Class 1 challenge of the FSAE in Silverstone and in Fiorano in 2007, will represent a big step ahead being the first actively controlled car of Politecnico di Milano. A new gearbox with paddle shift fixed to the steering wheel - like a F1 vehicle - will be installed, and the gear changing will be totally automated. The students trust in CarMaker to develop and test the systems. For the automated gear changing they have customized the CarMaker vehicle model to reproduce the correct powertrain dynamics and the exact gear changing procedure. Moreover, the actively steered rear wheels, also developed with CarMaker, will be implemented to enhance the vehicle performance. Andrea Zorzutti, a member of the Dynamis Team, about his work with CarMaker, says: "At Politecnico di Milano, CarMaker was already known from the research activity undertaken in co-operation with Italian automotive companies. We appreciate CarMaker very much because of its intuitive interface, the reliability of results and the versatility in the controller design."
Besides the control systems, great expectations lie with a new suspension layout. It will replace the old system (even if it was very innovative), based on a double-wishbone scheme with a torsion bar instead of a helical spring. The new suspension will be a push-rod system with a single helical spring, an anti-roll bar and rotating dampers. The Dynamis Team uses IPG-KINEMATICS for the design of this new suspension.
IPG wishes the Dynamis Team a lot of success for the racing season 2007!
