Hello from the Warwick Racing Team 2014/2015!

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As we bid farewell to our newly graduated WR4 team in July, exciting changes have been happening at WRHQ. Previously, Warwick Racing has comprised of 4th year Engineering Masters Students who undertake the Formula Student Project as part of their course, limiting our number to 10-20 established, yet ultimately overworked, engineers.

This year, Warwick Racing has been majorly restructured. Recognising that greater knowledge transfer breeds success, we have invited Warwick students across all years and degree streams to get involved! Following a big recruitment drive in the early weeks of October, we now stand at 60+ active members, and can’t wait to see this grow throughout the year.

Thanks to this increased workforce, we’re setting our sights higher than ever before! We aim to:

• Enter 3 competitions• Formula Student UK (FSUK) @ Silverstone• Formula Student Germany (FSG) @ Hockenheim• Formula Student Austria (FSA) @ Red Bull Ring

• Complete all events, static and dynamic, at all 3 competitions

Those of you familiar with our past history, and the Formula Student competition in general, will recognise that these aims are no mean feat. The Management team have spent all summer planning and restructuring our team goals and ethos, and have arrived at an ambitious, yet achievable, 5 year plan. For now, we will discuss our imminent goals for WR5, and what events the team have been lucky enough to attend!

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Powertrain

The Powertrain group has expanded from 7 to 20 members this year for WR5. With this increase in members we hope to optimise the WR4 Powertrain to be lighter, more efficient and more powerful for WR5! We’re focussing on these areas to improve drivability, and have data acquisition and testing sub-teams on board to focus on the finer tuning of the system. This means we are sticking with our KTM 450 SXF engine (with a spare on the way!) and Drexler differential set up, as this led to Warwick Racing’s most reliable powertrain to date.

Alongside fine tuning the existing system, we are investigating concepts for the future in line with our 5 year plan. This way, we can develop cutting-edge technology to a point where it is reliable enough in the future to not hinder our aim of completing all events.

We are looking to see lap times tumble this year at Silverstone with lots of testing behind us. We have a great base car in WR4, some interesting future concepts up our sleeve, and a large team committed to making WR5 our best car yet. Ideas are flooding in thick and fast, and our preliminary research is proving very promising. We’re eager to update you on our progress each month, from concept to execution. One thing’s for sure - it’s going to be an exciting year!

Chassis

We have 21 members in the Chassis sub-team this year, ranging from first-years to final-years with a variety of skills, experience and expertise between us. More importantly, we are all highly enthusiastic about our new or renewed involvement in Warwick Racing. We hope this will be the basis of a wealth of future knowledge for the team. The whole team is currently working hard on concept designs for their chassis components for WR5. Apart from design work on this year’s car, some members of the team will begin work on more innovative design ideas for inclusion on future cars.

We are focussing on improving 3 keys areas for WR5:Pedal Box - The pedal box will be a brand new, original design, incorporating ergonomics, packaging, and robustness.Spaceframe - We are highly optimising our WR4 design, for a structurally sound and lightweight skeleton.Rear Bulkhead Plate - Following on from intense design and optimisation for the WR4 plate, we are looking at evolving this design to achieve high integrity at a low weight.

Overall, we are hoping to drastically reduce weight without compromising the reliability or safety of the car. Optimisation, redesign and testing will all play their parts in our components as we strive to increase performance without hindering manufacturability and quality. We will achieve this through intense, yet seamless, integration with the Powertrain and Dynamics teams, to ensure optimal performance can be achieved in our 2015 competition campaign.

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Composites

The composite materials team has started this year by focussing heavily on knowledge transfer. To establish this, as soon as we were assembled we had a host of design classes to help those without previous composite material knowledge to learn about how to design with composite materials.

Due to our areas of interest, and following on from the success of WR4’s impact attenuator nosecone, we have particularly focussed on designing the lay-up for sandwich panels. This initial training has led the group to split into three further sub teams, each with a different specialisation. The sub-teams have been carrying out secondary research for each of their parts and they will use their findings to guide their initial designs within the coming weeks.

There is a very wide scope for the development of composite parts in Warwick Racing, thanks to the world class facilities and knowledge within WMG. We aim to take a two pronged approach, with a large proportion of our effort being focussed on developing new parts for WR5, including a set of carbon fibre wishbones, bonded in floor panels and unconventionally, composite catch cans.

The continuous 5 year plan has enabled the composites team to focus on the development of more advanced composite components for implementation on future cars, alongside our more imminent design work for the upcoming WR5.

Dynamics

Amidst all the excitement surrounding Warwick Racing's new team structure, and the extra strain placed on resources in setting this up, we've had to remain very grounded in the Dynamics team. Following a full risk assessment, some of our initial design ideas have had to be reversed as we shift our focus and our efforts to manufacturing a car in time for a full testing program. This is inline with our team goals of turning up to competition with a car reliable enough to gain points in every event.

Through our long term 5 year plan, we have created realistic targets for when we believe we could introduce new technologies onto the car, including 10 inch wheels and 3D printed dynamic components. We are establishing the groundwork this year, to allow very exciting future advancements in coming years.

For WR5, we are changing the front geometry and shifting to direct acting shocks to give the suspension more travel. We aim to test WR4 frequently until WR5 is born, to improve our understanding of tuning and allow ourselves better set up for competitions. In the meantime we will be using data collected from testing to start the design phase for new geometry for the future.

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Team EventsWilliams F1

The team were luck enough to be invited as guests to an open day at Williams F1 Head Quarters on 18th October 2014. 10 lucky members had the chance to be shown around their facilities in Wantage, and compete against each other in a lap around Silverstone in an F1 simulator vehicle!

In true style, by the skin of his teeth after a faster looking team member went off track, Ricky Moseley, the team Dynamics Manager, ruled victorious.

Massive thanks go to Andrew Cropper for the guest passes! Check out this shot in front of their impressive pit stop hedge, and a photo of the team with last year’s Williams F1 model on the title page.

WRFC

On the cold, dark evening of Thursday 30th October, the inaugural appearance for Warwick Racing Football Club (WRFC) kicked off as a 5-aside fixture versus DPXE FC. An abundant squad of 10 arrived keen to secure their place in the starting line-up, enthusiasm matched only by technical prowess.

Over the next 40 minutes, a 12-5 demolition of the opposition ensued as a squad rotation system ensured everyone was able to influence the course of this one-sided affair, and saw WRFC rise 4 places in the UW5 Bundesliga.

This is the start of a promising season for a gifted squad who will only get better with increasing match-fitness and chemistry, producing performances to emulate this outstanding show.

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IMechEEngineering Design Show

We had the opportunity to showcase last year’s car, WR4, at the Engineering Design Show at the Ricoh Arena, Coventry, on the 22nd and 23rd

October in conjunction with the IMechE. We had a great couple of days, and a lot of interest in the team and our project.

Learn 2 Win

31st October saw Warwick Racing’s first attendance at the IMechE Formula Student Learn 2 Win event in Westminster, London. Following an absurdly early start for some of the management team, we had a very informative day picking the judges brains regarding competition performance.

We would like to thank Lucy, Chris, Monique and the rest of the IMechE Formula Student team for organising both of these events, and look forward to working more with them in the run up to Formula Student UK 2015.

Formula Student UK competition dates have been confirmed for 9 – 12 July 2015 so please save the date to come along and support the team!

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We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our partners for their sponsorship and continued support to which we owe our success to date. Formula Student is an extracurricular, voluntary project and sponsored almost entirely by external sponsors.

We welcome support of any kind, whether it be financial or in-kind contributions, expertise, advice, materials, use of testing facilities or assistance with testing.

If you would like to sponsor Warwick Racing or would like to find out more about what we do, please contact either of our Sponsorship Managers on the details listed below.

Sponsorship Managers 2014/2015

Vignesh Amur

Sponsorship Manager

Sarah Chen

Sponsorship Manager

Warwick Racing

IMC Building

Tel: +44 7970 011936 Tel: +44 7977 155262 WMG

Email: V.Amur@warwick.ac.uk Email: Saherabanu.Chen@warwick.ac.uk University of

Warwick

Coventry

• University of Wolverhampton STEM

• WRFC vs Perpetual Motion Squad

• Advanced Engineering Shows

• Technology Insertion Plan

• Imagineering

• WR4 Testing

Coming up in November…

Sponsorship