In 2016, IEEE Spectrum spotlighted Ohio State College’s Buckeye Present staff, a gaggle of engineering college students who dared to check their electrical bike’s mettle towards 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 have been holdovers from the Pike’s Peak days. The staff roster wasn’t the one change. That yr, 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 completely new electrical bike, 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 Bike Velocity Trials. The trials have been overseen by the Fédération Internationale de Motorcyclisme (FIM).
Rebuilding a File-Setting Workforce
David Cooke, the senior affiliate director at OSU’s Middle for Automotive Analysis, is the staff’s college 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 trying to determine what it might do subsequent. Then the pandemic hit, and the staff shrank right down to nearly nothing.”
“On our final day at Bonneville, I informed the staff, ‘You began just a few 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 have been engaged on associated aspect tasks, together with an electrical dust bike. They and Laura Friedmann, graduate pupil who lately earned her grasp’s diploma in mechanical engineering, fashioned the nucleus of the revived Buckeye Present staff. In simply two years, they have been capable of recruit new staff members, design and construct the RW-5 Voxan, and decide up a bunch of technical and challenge administration expertise and expertise that they might by no means have gained contained in the classroom.
Cooke credit the short bounce-back to OSU’s wealthy institutional information. “We now have seven of those competitors groups, with a complete of about 300 college students, that function out of our facility,” says Cooke. “All informed, we’ve been collaborating in competitions equivalent to Method SAE and Baja SAE for 35 years, so there’s a number of institutional information there. Even when the staff has youthful college students coming in, there’s at all times some senior individuals round who know easy methods to train necessary expertise equivalent to machining, design, and easy methods to set up themselves for fast turnarounds on the monitor.”
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 bike has reached its prime 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 bike interrupts a second laser beam that stops the timer. The remainder of the route gives room for the motive force to coast right down to a velocity at which it’s secure to use the brakes.
The FIM makes use of a median velocity throughout two runs tried inside a two-hour window in its document concerns. Buckeye Present staff president Sabina Williams, a fourth-year pupil pursuing a bachelor’s diploma in mechanical engineering, says that by the point the Bike 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 bike 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, could be balanced out by enhancing the bike’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 fantastic Sunday,” he says, “you’re driving on a floor whose traction approximates asphalt after something from a lightweight rain to snow and ice.”
To place the Buckeye Present staff’s bike 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 akin 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 bundle allowed the RW-5 Voxan to set new all-time velocity data in 4 classes:
- Quickest common velocity and not using a fairing (an aerodynamic cowl designed to scale back turbulence): 271.323 km/h (168.59 mph) over one mile.
- Quickest common velocity and not using a 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 brought on 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 have 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 big problem I used to be proud to see the staff overcome,” says Williams.
A typical theme amongst electrical bike groups there, Williams says, was scuffling with battery temperatures. The Buckeye Present staff had issue maintaining 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 maintaining its battery heat sufficient to race within the mornings when temperatures have been low. And all the groups confronted a relentless struggle to maintain the salt from corroding their bikes’ steel elements.
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 have been a number of actually vibrant aspiring engineers,” says Cooke. “However we didn’t have a single one who had expertise with race vehicles or on a racing staff. On our final day at Bonneville, I informed the staff, ‘You began just a few 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 aim: Eclipsing the 200 mile-per-hour (322-kilometer-per-hour) mark inside the subsequent yr.
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