Motorsport is a testing ground
Motorsport is a very competitive field in which a great deal of research and development takes centre stage. The competitive edge is usually obtained by paring the last few milligrams of each component and like military aircraft, this process is taken to the maximum to keep ahead of the competition and not to lose that edge through over-design of any component. To achieve this, the research and development uses force sensors for on-car testing as well as testing components to destruction on materials testing in the workshop and manufacturers’ testing lab.
On-car testing of structural components takes many forms and all use piezo-resistive force sensors (or transducers). Let us take a quick canter through the applications of force sensors commonly used in motorsport and how these motorsport sensors are used in this area of automobile development.
Fatigue testing in the laboratory of suspension, structural members and other components is a very necessary starting point when testing a new car design. Individual components are tested to destruction for both absolute strength and fatigue life on materials test rigs containing force sensors and torque sensors. This is followed by testing of the whole car on a rolling road followed by the test track to amass dynamic loading data using components that are especially constructed with load cells and static torque sensors incorporated in the linkage. The measurements include include suspension linkage force, gear change force, steering force and wheel bearing force.
Steering Force Load Cell
When designing a new body shape for a car, especially within motorsport, it is essential to establish how the car performs aerodynamically both from a fuel consumption and more particularly, from a safety point of view. Initially, car mock ups are wind tunnel tested to test for lift, drag and yaw using load cell sensors upon the mock up’s platform. This way, spoilers and other drag reduction measures can be modelled and improved as well as dynamic suspension tweaks.
Other measurements used on instrumented cars on the test tracks include integral wheel drag, foot brake force, engine & braking dynamometer readings, hand brake force, instrumented spherical rod end bearings and pitch link force for motor bikes.
Find out about position sensors from Applied Measurements on engineeringface.