Motorsports product spotlight
Technologies and services that will be on display at the Motorsports Engineering Conference & Exhibition, slated for December 2-5 in Indianapolis, are previewed. The event—sponsored by Ford, GM Racing, and Dodge Motorsports along with Honeywell, SEMA, and the Indy Racing League—will feature over 20 sessions including two historical sessions, five panel discussions on topics such as engine/drivetrain and safety, and a keynote address by Pete Spence, Vice President of Toyota Racing Development.
Racing gasoline
76 Cool Blue 100 Racing Gasoline from 76 Performance Products is a street-legal 100-octane unleaded gasoline developed for street and racing applications. The product can be used in high-compression-ratio engines up to 14:1, turbocharged engines, supercharged engines, and engines equipped with moderate amounts of nitrous oxide. It contains no metallic additives and is completely compatible with catalytic converters and oxygen sensors. Drag strip testing of this gasoline has shown improvements of 4 mph (6 km/h) and 0.5 s when compared to 92-octane gasoline in a stock Buick Grand National.
Impact injury criteria
Through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and TRICE Motorsports Research seek to bring various participants from motorsports, sanctioning bodies, automotive manufacturers, race industry suppliers, race teams, and the academic and consulting communities to participate in ongoing research projects with the goal of reducing injuries and fatalities of vehicle operators. Researchers are working to develop, validate, and field advanced instrumentation to measure driver head acceleration and restraint loads during practice sessions and races. Equipment includes instrumented earplugs to measure driver head accelerations in crashes and a horizontal impulse accelerator that generates impact acceleration profiles up to 150 g.
Hard coating
Anatech's Casidiam hard carbon thin-film coating provides component life extension, reduced parasitic power requirements, and reduced maintenance requirements for several parts in racing engines. Applied in 2 to 4 micron (80 to 160 µin), Casidiam has a high hardness and provides friction reduction of more than 70% for lubricated applications. It is used in professional and amateur stock car, open wheel, drag racing, and other types of racing. The flexible coating does not flake off of the coated surface. When it is applied to wrist pins, it reduces galling and metal particles released to the oil system, preserving pin bore surfaces and extending intervals between piston re-honing. For intake valve applications experiencing high wear on the seat area, the coating reduces wear rates and essentially eliminates power degradation near the end of races due to seal losses.
Testing services
CAPE (Center for Advanced Product Evaluation), a division of IMMI, offers a full complement of crashworthiness testing services for vehicle OEMs and component manufacturers. The range of services includes computer simulation, dynamic testing on three forward firing deceleration sleds, frontal barrier test, offset barrier test, and rolling test laboratory, as well as a pendulum impact, quasi-static pull, and light component vibration testing. The facility also features a custom rollover machine (pictured). Advanced data acquisition and high-speed digital imaging technologies allow customers to review test data immediately, both on site and at remote locations via an FTP site.
Engine design
Optimum Power Technology's Automated Design with Virtual Engines takes established engine simulation technology and combines it with advanced optimization techniques and parallel processing to create an expert system for engine design. First, a base engine model is created. Then, an engineer selects the parts of the engine to change for improved performance. Running simulations in parallel, Automated Design creates new engines and compares the solutions. It uses built-in intelligence to assess which direction to move within the design space to create a better engine. The company's PTrAc solution (pictured) is suitable for the measurement and analysis of high-speed signals from IC engines. It combines the flexibility of PC-based data acquisition with powerful user-friendly software.
