In 2016, IEEE Spectrum spotlighted Ohio State College’s Buckeye Present staff, a gaggle of engineering college students who dared to check their electrical motorbike’s mettle in opposition to professionals within the grueling Pikes Peak Worldwide Hill Climb. The 20-kilometer “Race to the Clouds” challenged the scholars with 156 hairpin activates a trek to the 4,300-meter summit.
By 2022, solely two members of the staff had been holdovers from the Pike’s Peak days. The staff roster wasn’t the one change. That 12 months, the Buckeye Present staff shifted its focus from conquering mountains to shattering land velocity data. In a collaboration with the staff’s sponsor, Monaco-based Venturi Group, college students began constructing and testing a wholly new electrical motorbike, the RW-5 Voxan.
In August, the Buckeye Present staff and the RW-5 Voxan, piloted by Venturi’s head of engineering, Louis-Marie Blondel, set 4 new world velocity data on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah throughout the Bonneville Motorbike Velocity Trials. The trials had been overseen by the Fédération Internationale de Motorcyclisme (FIM).
Rebuilding a File-Setting Crew
David Cooke, the senior affiliate director at OSU’s Middle for Automotive Analysis, is the staff’s school advisor. He says the profitable Pikes Peak staff was scattered by the COVID-19 pandemic. “The timing was horrible,” he says. “The staff had simply wrapped up an entire sequence of races and was simply seeking to determine what it might do subsequent. Then the pandemic hit, and the staff shrank all the way down to virtually nothing.”
“On our final day at Bonneville, I advised the staff, ‘You began a couple of weeks in the past as an ideal pupil membership, however you’re leaving as a racing staff.’” —David Cookie, OSU’s Middle for Automotive Analysis
Cooke remembers that the remnant was two college students who had been engaged on associated aspect initiatives, together with an electrical dust bike. They and Laura Friedmann, graduate pupil who lately earned her grasp’s diploma in mechanical engineering, shaped the nucleus of the revived Buckeye Present staff. In simply two years, they had been capable of recruit new staff members, design and construct the RW-5 Voxan, and choose up a number of technical and challenge administration abilities and expertise that they’d by no means have gained contained in the classroom.
Cooke credit the short bounce-back to OSU’s wealthy institutional information. “We’ve seven of those competitors groups, with a complete of about 300 college students, that function out of our facility,” says Cooke. “All advised, we’ve been taking part in competitions reminiscent of Components SAE and Baja SAE for 35 years, so there’s lots of institutional information there. Even when the staff has youthful college students coming in, there’s all the time some senior individuals round who know methods to train necessary abilities reminiscent of machining, design, and methods to set up themselves for fast turnarounds on the observe.”
File-Setting Efficiency
The FIM assesses a motorbike’s velocity utilizing a straight path measuring 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) lengthy. On the 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) mark, after the motorbike has reached its high velocity, it breaks a laser beam that begins a timer. A second laser, both 1 mile or 1 kilometer farther on the route (relying on the actual document being tried), the motorbike interrupts a second laser beam that stops the timer. The remainder of the route gives room for the driving force to coast all the way down to a velocity at which it’s protected to use the brakes.
The FIM makes use of a mean velocity throughout two runs tried inside a two-hour window in its document issues. Buckeye Present staff president Sabina Williams, a fourth-year pupil pursuing a bachelor’s diploma in mechanical engineering, says that by the point the Motorbike Velocity Trials started, the staff was capable of accomplish the turnaround inside one hour.
The Buckeye Present staff entered the 148-kilogram RW-5 Voxan within the velocity trials’ electrical motorbike class for machines weighing between 100 and 150 kilograms. (There’s additionally a class for machines between 150 and 300 kg, and an “limitless” class for something past 300 kg.) Williams says the staff added specifically machined steel items to convey the RW-5 Voxan’s weight proper as much as the 150 kg restrict. The added weight, the staff figured, can be balanced out by bettering the motorbike’s traction on the salt flats’ slippery floor: Cooke says that the salt floor at Bonneville has about half the coefficient of friction of asphalt. “So as an alternative of driving on grippy asphalt on a stupendous Sunday,” he says, “you’re driving on a floor whose traction approximates asphalt after something from a light-weight rain to snow and ice.”
To place the Buckeye Present staff’s motorbike in perspective, contemplate the long-lasting Vespa scooter. The peppiest of these light-weight scooters put out 18 kilowatts, or simply shy of 25 horsepower, in contrast with the 130 kW (174 hp) the RW-5 Voxan’s Past AXM2 axial flux motor delivers. The electrical bike’s energy output is corresponding to that of Ducati’s Panigale V2, a gasoline-powered, street-legal sport bike that weighs in at 200 kg.
The Buckeye staff’s profitable pairing of middleweight energy in a light-weight package deal allowed the RW-5 Voxan to set new all-time velocity data in 4 classes:
- Quickest common velocity with no fairing (an aerodynamic cowl designed to cut back turbulence): 271.323 km/h (168.59 mph) over one mile.
- Quickest common velocity with no fairing: 271.515 km/h (168.71 mph) over one kilometer.
- Quickest common velocity with a fairing: 289.74 km/h (180.035 mph) over one mile.
- Quickest common velocity with a fairing: 289.79 km/h (180.065 mph) over one kilometer.
These data are nonetheless pending validation by FIM.
New Challenges for Buckeye Present
Although there was no mountain to climb this time round, the Ohio State staff nonetheless confronted challenges. Whereas prepping in Utah, Williams says that racing the bike at or close to peak energy induced its motor to burn out. The staff changed it with a spare motor they occurred to have available. After working late into the evening calibrating the brand new motor, they had been capable of full the ultimate two of the 4 days of timed sprints, throughout which the bike was pushed to its limits. “That was a major problem I used to be proud to see the staff overcome,” says Williams.
A typical theme amongst electrical motorbike groups there, Williams says, was combating battery temperatures. The Buckeye Present staff had problem preserving its machine’s 567-volt lithium-ion battery pack cool within the warmth of the salt flats. Williams notes that one other staff had issues preserving its battery heat sufficient to race within the mornings when temperatures had been low. And the entire groups confronted a continuing combat to maintain the salt from corroding their bikes’ steel components.
The world document achievements not solely spotlight the continued success of the Buckeye Present staff but in addition underscore the potential of electrical bikes to set new benchmarks in velocity and efficiency. “What we had on this staff had been lots of actually vibrant aspiring engineers,” says Cooke. “However we didn’t have a single one that had expertise with race automobiles or on a racing staff. On our final day at Bonneville, I advised the staff, ‘You began a couple of weeks in the past as an ideal pupil membership, however you’re leaving as a racing staff.’” Williams says the newly minted race staff now has its sights set on a brand new purpose: Eclipsing the 200 mile-per-hour (322-kilometer-per-hour) mark inside the subsequent 12 months.
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