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Shock Challenge

Posted August 13th, 2012 by Bruce Bennett

If you’re a racing fan who has always thought that, given the opportunity, you could match your technical skills wheel-to-wheel with some of the best engineers in the sport, you’ve got one last chance to make your dream come true.

Mega-distributor Mouser Electronics has been conducting a unique competition this year called the Mouser 500 Engineering Challenge. What they did was take three very real technical problems faced by the IndyCar racing team they sponsor – the KV Racing Technology #11 driven by Tony Kanaan – and asked engineers just like you to help solve them. A panel of experts reviews the proposed ideas and selects what they think are the ten best solutions, which they give to the racing team – the ultimate experts – to decide the winner. Each of the ten finalists receives an official 2012 Mouser Racing tee-shirt, not to mention bragging rights they can use to impress all their gearhead friends. But the ultimate bragging rights – and a shiny new iPad3 HD 32GB Wi-Fi – goes to each of the three winners, who are also entered into a special drawing to win a racing helmet personally autographed by Tony Kanaan.

The first challenge, which ran from May 1 to June 15, involved coming up with a way to fully automate the various cycles of the racing team’s shock absorber (a.k.a. damper) vacuum machine.

The second challenge, which ran from June 16 to July 31, asked contestants to come up with a better way to accurately determine the fuel level in the team’s pit road refueling tank.

The final challenge, which runs through September 15, asks contestants to design a set of insulation pads that can heat or cool the car’s shock absorbers in order to maintain their optimum operating temperature of 80°C ± 5°C. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well you can take it from me – nothing in IndyCar racing is as simple as it seems. When driven at the limits of adhesion, an IndyCar’s shock absorbers take a real pounding, dissipating energy in the form of heat. Adding to the problem is the fact that the rear shock absorbers are mounted in close proximity to the engine and exhaust system, exposing them to even higher temperatures.

So, do you think you can design a set of insulation pads that could be wrapped around the bodies of the shock absorbers and either cool or heat them to maintain a constant temperature of 80°C ± 5°C, all from a single control unit? If so, go to the Mouser 500 Engineering Challenge Web site and show the folks at Mouser and the KV Racing Technology team what you can do. Just imagine what it would be like watching Tony Kanaan take the checkered flag knowing that your engineering expertise helped get him there.

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Another Chance To Shine

Posted July 9th, 2012 by Bruce Bennett

Racing fans who read NASA Tech Briefs already know about a unique contest being run by circuit protection manufacturer Littelfuse called Speed2Design that gives five lucky engineers the chance to win an all-expenses paid trip to one of four IndyCar races this year. Well, it turns out one of their partners on Tony Kanaan’s KV Racing Technology IndyCar, primary sponsor Mouser Electronics, is running a pretty interesting competition of their own.

Called the Mouser 500 Engineering Challenge, this intriguing competition gives engineers the opportunity to solve real-world racing technology problems. The first challenge, which ended on June 15, involved redesigning the team’s damper vacuum machine so that it can more efficiently drain damper oil from the car’s shock absorbers and refill them to the correct pressure under vacuum so that no air can get inside. Ensuring accurate performance of the shock absorbers (a.k.a. dampers) is critical for the car’s performance.

The current challenge, which runs through July 31, is to come up with a more accurate way of determining the level of fuel in the team’s refueling tank. Why is that important? Because an IndyCar typically averages about 1.92 miles per gallon, but that can vary slightly depending on race conditions. By knowing precisely how much fuel has been used after every pit stop, a team can more accurately predict its usage and plan its pit stops accordingly. That’s important because knowing you can go just one extra lap on a load of fuel instead of having to pit could be the difference between winning and losing a race.

According to Mouser, the system currently in use to determine fuel levels is a Gill level sensor that is mounted in the tank. The sensor, which runs off a bulky 12V DC power supply with 0-5V DC output and an RS422 serial feed, is only used during practice and test sessions, not under racing conditions. What the team would like is some type of system that “…includes a local and rugged digital readout for fuel volume to be used during actual IndyCar races that can also wirelessly transmit real-time fuel levels to a laptop in the pit. All electronics will be external to the tank in an environmentally sealed enclosure. General racing parameters include the practice of using sealed connectors, externally braided wire, and environmentally sealed boxes that conform to IP67/68.”

What’s great about this competition is that you don’t actually have to design, build and test a prototype of your solution in order to qualify for consideration. You simply have to write up a detailed description of your idea and submit it online by July 31 at the Mouser 500 Engineering Challenge website. The 10 ideas judged to be the best potential solutions to the problem will then be evaluated by the Mouser/KV Racing Technology team and the one they determine to be the best will win its entrant an Apple iPad 3. But that’s not all. The three challenge winners will then be entered for a chance to win the grand prize of an autographed Tony Kanaan racing helmet.

To get complete contest rules and learn how you can participate, visit the official Mouser 500 Engineering Challenge website, but better do it soon. The checkered flag falls on Challenge #2 on July 31.

The third and final challenge will begin August 1 and close on September 15.

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Fantasy Camp for Engineers

Posted June 15th, 2012 by Bruce Bennett

You’ve no doubt heard about fantasy camps that give ordinary, everyday people the opportunity to step out of their routine 9-to-5 lives and live out their dreams for a few days in the company of those who have done it – and in some cases are still doing it – at the professional level. There are baseball fantasy camps for those who grew up dreaming of someday playing in the majors. There are rock and roll fantasy camps for frustrated musicians who always wondered what it would feel like to rock out at Madison Square Garden. But what about engineers? Just because we spend most of our time grounded in reality, figuring out how everything in the world works, doesn’t mean we don’t have fantasies like everybody else.

Unfortunately, until recently nobody paid much attention to that. Then along came Littelfuse, a company that specializes in producing some of the best circuit protection devices in the world. Their products are used in all types of electronics, from the simplest to the most complex applications including the highly sophisticated electronic control and data acquisition systems designed into IndyCar race cars. IndyCars are arguably one of the most technologically advanced types of race car in the world today. The sleek, aerodynamic single-seaters can easily exceed 225 mph and they generate so much negative lift – a.k.a. “downforce” – that at 200 mph they could theoretically run upside-down on the ceiling without falling off. Unlike NASCAR, where it’s all about the driver, in IndyCar racing it’s all about the technology.

So, this year the folks at Littelfuse came up with a cool idea called Speed2Design that is basically a fantasy camp for engineers. Here’s how it works. In conjunction with their distributor, Mouser Electronics, Littelfuse sponsors the KV Racing Technology #11 IndyCar driven by Tony Kanaan. To capitalize on their investment, they invited engineers from all over the country to visit the Speed2Design Web site and enter for a chance to win an all-expenses paid trip to one of four IndyCar races. But this is no ordinary trip. The five winners at each race get full pit and garage credentials, which gives them the opportunity to mingle with the team, watch them build and rebuild the cars, ask them questions, get a detailed tech talk from team members explaining everything from car set-up to data acquisition, stand in the pit box as they practice, and then watch the race. Unless you get hired by a team, there is no way to get any closer to the action, and I know because I’ve been a motor racing journalist for 40 years now.

That’s one of the reasons I had mixed feelings when I first heard about the idea. As an engineer, I saw the immediate value of it. What engineer wouldn’t jump at a chance like this? But having been around the sport as long as I have, I’ve seen what can happen when the pressure is on. I’ve seen A.J. Foyt throw wrenches and tear into people when things weren’t going his way. I’ve been snapped at by Darrell Waltrip when he didn’t feel like answering questions. I’ve had my foot run over by a stock car because the crew members pushing it thought I was in their way. I’ve seen the worst some drivers and team members could dish out to people they considered “outsiders,” and it wasn’t pretty. So I admit I had some reservations about bringing 5 inquisitive engineers into a team’s garage and giving them free-run of the place. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

At the Indy 500, the biggest race in the world, the team could not have been more accommodating, despite the amount of pressure they were under. The five lucky winners got to spend countless hours in the garage watching the mechanics adjust and readjust every component on the car. They got to meet the driver, Tony Kanaan; the team’s chief technologist, Eric Cowdin; and Mario Illien, one of the brains behind the Chevy IndyCar engines. They got to ask the team’s engineers and mechanics as many questions as they wished, and take pictures of things most racing fans never see. Two weeks later, 5 more engineers got a similar experience at Texas Motor Speedway (TMS), and again the KV Racing Technology engineers and mechanics could not have been more accommodating.

In speaking with the winners at both Indy and TMS, one thing became clear. Most admitted that if they were younger and not so settled in their careers, they would’ve jumped at the chance to work for an IndyCar team. One young lady had no such reservations however. Freshly graduated from the Milwaukee School of Engineering with a degree in mechanical engineering, she postponed her graduation party to make the trip to Texas. For her senior design project, she’d captained her school’s Formula Hybrid International team, which designed and built a small race car to compete against other colleges in events held at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. For her, winning the Speed2Design contest was a way to get her foot in the door and hopefully make contacts that might lead to a dream job in the sport she loves so much. And it might have worked. When we left Texas, the word was that the team was going to give her a try-out at the Milwaukee race. How cool would that be if she makes it?

How about you? There are still two races left in the contest. To enter, go to Speed2Design.com.

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