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Clever and smart: BRS Motorsport presents new electric racing car
Aluminium 3D printing, CNC milling, wire erosion, case hardening, CNC turning: The students of the motorsport team at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg have used a variety of manufacturing processes to reduce the weight of their new racing car. The wheel assembly, for example, is a good one kilogramme lighter than last year's model. With a vehicle weighing only around 200 kilograms in total, such a reduction is literally significant. Many design changes were necessary to achieve this saving. Even the friction-optimised sealing rings played their part. The members of the motorsport team are very proud of the result of their months of tinkering. Especially as they believed they were at the limit of what was technically feasible with the completely new vehicle concept developed just last year. The student tinkerers managed to reduce the weight of the carbon-sandwich formula racing car by ten kilograms across all components. In the weeks leading up to the rollout, they worked round the clock in the production workshop to finalise the new prototype. Production had already begun in December of the previous year. Thousands of hours of development and computer simulations went into the design.
At a ceremony in the Audimax on the Sankt Augustin Campus, the students, who are organised in the BRS Motorsport association, presented the new model, christened G24e - Gina, to the public. The carbon-fibre racer has four electric motors with a total output of 80 kilowatts, which should accelerate it to 100 kilometres per hour in 2.3 seconds. The acceleration value, like the aerodynamic forces and the top speed of 120 kilometres per hour, comes from the extensive simulations carried out by the students. The actual values now need to be determined in the test drives. The electric racing car designed and built for the 2024 season is a further development of last year's model, with which the student motorsport group has broken new technical ground in many respects.
‘With the 2024 racing car, we are building on our mechanical concept from last year, eliminating small weak points, reducing the weight and relying on a new aero package. Our G24e is a real anniversary race car: it is our 15th race car in the association's history and also marks our tenth all-electric year,’ says Simon Hoos, H-BRS student and team leader of BRS Motorsport. "A lot of knowledge transfer is currently taking place. Bachelor's theses, new vehicle developments and the targeted training of the many new team members have created a close-knit team that should ensure our success in the coming years."
The list of optimisations that the students have developed for the racing car is long. The aerodynamic add-on parts at the rear and front are particularly eye-catching. When designing them, the students focussed on so-called three-dimensional geometries. The various wings are not designed as straight surfaces, but have curved shapes, which is particularly demanding in terms of production, but significantly improves the aerodynamics.
The students were helped in their design by the university's mainframe computers, which enabled very data-intensive simulations. One premiere are the hollow wing profiles. They also contribute to weight savings. As in the case of the topology-optimised wheel carrier with integrated perimeter brake, the idea for this goes back to a Bachelor's theses. Collaboration in the motorsport group is embedded in the university's curriculum, which is why ideas developed by a team member in a seminar paper are always incorporated into the racing car project. The student motorsport athletes are particularly proud of the automated analysis of vehicle data. Electronic components developed in-house allow them to transmit vehicle data in real time while driving to enable faster lap times. They also use the large data sets collected at the end of the drive to gain insights for future racing car models.
With the new racing car, the students are well prepared for the upcoming season, in which they will compete against the best European Formula Student teams. The season will kick off with a race on the ultra-modern test track in Zalaegerszeg, Hungary, on 29 July. From there, the team will travel directly to Most in the Czech Republic, without a stopover in Sankt Augustin. For the BRS Motorsport team, the curvy track there is associated with exciting memories from the previous season: The team took first place there in the prestigious ‘Engineering Design’ category. After the race in the Czech Republic, there will again be little time for recovery and possible repairs, as the final competition in Croatia is already on the agenda from 20 August.
Motorsport an der H-BRS
On the race track: scenes from the 2023 season
Contact
Dirk Reith
Computational Science and Engineering , Managing Director of the TREE Institute, Presidential commissioner for institutional research co-operations, Faculty Advisor BRS Motorsport
Research fields
Location
Sankt Augustin
Room
B 223
Address
Grantham-Allee 20
53757 Sankt Augustin
Telephone
+49 2241 865 9678
Location
Sankt Augustin
Room
E 240
Address
Grantham-Allee 20
53757, Sankt Augustin
Telephone
+49 2241 865 9560