MAHLE Powertrain news - July 2019

Formula Student 2019 competition is fast approaching and MAHLE Powertrain – the sponsor of Team Bath Racing Electric, Cardiff Racing and UBRacing – will be sharing the latest company news as well as the sponsored teams’ updates.

MAHLE Powertrain has built a new facility for the assembly and disassembly of battery modules and small battery packs in Northampton. This will allow the strip and inspection of post-test modules and units from field-trials in addition to assembly of new prototype units. New infrastructure is also being installed to enable the testing and characterisation of cells, modules and battery packs. To enhance electrification capabilities further, MAHLE Powertrain continues to develop dedicated facilities for eMotor testing and development.

In the upcoming week, Simon Williams - Principal Calibration Engineer at MAHLE Powertrain - will be presenting ‘Future RDE Development Methods’ at the Reducing Driving Emissions: Ensuring Compliance with RDE and WLTP seminar organised by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Learn more about the event here.

In our next newsletters, we will be sharing more information about MAHLE Powertrain’s involvement in renowned, international conferences taking place within the next the months. Now we would like to give you an insight into the sponsored teams’ latest news, written by TBRe, Cardiff Racing and UBRacing team members.

Team Bath Racing Electric

It has been a very intense couple of weeks at Team Bath Racing Electric. We officially unveiled our 2019 car at our Launch Event on the 29th of May. At this event, we revealed the major new technologies implemented on this year’s car, such as our first venture into a carbon fibre chassis. Since this we have been rapidly working to get our car fully operational for FSUK, with full electrical safety and reliability testing as well as the implementation of a new monitoring system for this year’s vehicle.

We also took the opportunity at launch to formally announce our rebranding to better align with Team Bath, the prestigious sporting body at the University of Bath. This will offer more marketing opportunities and will promote our team both within the University and externally.

Finally, the launch event saw the reveal of our 2019 sponsors. This year we took the opportunity to honour our long-term sponsors, such as MAHLE Powertrain, with the title of Platinum sponsor. The team again saw a growth in overall sponsorship with nine new sponsors partnering with TBRe for the 2019 season. We are looking forward to racing in a couple of weeks’ time and demonstrating what we have created over the past year.

Cardiff Racing

With FSN starting this weekend, and FSUK only a fortnight away, it has been all hands on deck here at Cardiff Racing.

After exams we enjoyed a highly productive visit to MAHLE Powertrain to test our intake and exhaust systems with a Flow Bench, evaluating pressure drops at various points to compare against our CFD models, the initial signs are all very promising, with the intake especially showing great flow through the runners. Our analysis on the data is ongoing, and with help from MAHLE Powertrain we will be feeding the results back into our design processes for CR16 and beyond.

Cardiff Racing also enjoyed a highly successful launch event last month, with many faculty members and sponsors joining us to see the completed CR15 for the first time. The Welsh weather held off and we even managed to enjoy some sun for the open-air event in the School of Engineering. From speaking with people since, the general consensus is CR15 looks stunning a large update over CR14. Everyone is looking forward to seeing if it goes as good as it looks.

With CR15 built and on show for everyone to see, there was only one thing left to do, test. We have put a lot of miles on the car since launch, discovering the usual issues associated with prototypes, and fine tuning our setup. The testing time has been invaluable once again for driver training, and driver feedback on the adjustments would allow us to perform at our best at competition. We even managed to squeeze in a trip to a dyno, tuning our newly modified Triumph engine to work well with the current design on intake and exhaust. While we were unable to get power figures on the day, objective observations are very promising.

UBRacing

The countdown to Formula Student 2019 continues over in the UBRacing lab following on from our car launch on June 22nd.

As seen at the launch, the manufacture of the team’s first ever diffuser was a success and was completed using a 3D printed mould able to withstand the high temperature and pressure of an autoclave. Alongside the diffuser, our aerodynamics package includes modified front and rear wings validated with a scaled in-house 3D printed model.

The Powertrain Team recently had the chance to collaborate with MAHLE Powertrain, with Cliff Browett, Senior Principal Engineer, visiting our engine dyno. Cliff greatly helped the department by checking the work that has already gone into our camshaft selection and dyno calibration as well as developing our method for creating engine maps. Thanks to MAHLE Powertrain we will continue working on engine maps suited to every event for the competition.

Other exciting developments seen on UBR22 include a topology optimised pedal box with 3D printed pedals, a redesigned shear plate on the rear frame for improved stiffness, and in-house development of steady-state lap time simulator in MATLAB/Simulink.

The team have been very proud to induct more first years onto the team this year and have been working to train them in the manufacturing methods of the car over the past couple of months. This combined with the effort put into knowledge transfer will help to create strong teams for UBR23 and beyond.

With the car complete, we are now moving into the testing period before FSUK and are looking forward to what promises to be an exciting competition alongside some great teams.

Follow the latest updates on MAHLE Powertrain and the continued collaborative activities with IMechE and our sponsored teams through social media and the next newsletters. We are looking forward to see Cardiff Racing and Team Bath Racing Electric on site in the upcoming weeks.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/MAHLEUKCareers

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/showcase/mahle-powertrain

TBRe: https://teambathracingelectric.com

Cardiff Racing: http://www.cardiffracing.co.uk

UBRacing: https://www.facebook.com/UBRacingUK