Aerodynamics - Summer break 2015

During the 2015 summer break Mr Erents and a hand full of students from the Penair Engineering team gave up the torrential rain and the busy Cornish coast to improve the aerodynamics of Raptor Fusion. The challenge was to complete the body on a very tight budget as due to race commitments we only had £150 to spend on the bodywork. After much discussion the team decided to produce a foam core fiberglass body as this would be very light and stiff and could be cut and adapted later if required.

Fiberglass is not an environmentally friendly material however it has properties that other materials struggle to match. The fiberglass body is also likely to last many years and can easily be repaired, so it may actually be better than a body made out of an eco-friendly material that has to be remade multiple times.

When working with fiberglass it is important to have the correct PPE gear. Respirators and good ventilation are a must.

In order to keep costs down we had to use the old body as a mould. The correct way to do this would have been to make a mould from foam however the cost of the foam alone would have exceeded our budget. We would have then had to have the mould cut out using a CNC machine to get the high quality finish we were looking for.

The first thing we did was adapt and pack out the previous body with foam to get the aerodynamic improvements we were looking for. This included shrinking the nose an adding a tail to the car. The tail is very important as the current tail is flat and causes a lot of drag. We also removed 'pinch' points in the wheel arches and raised the front to allow air to flow over the driver. Once the amendments were completed we shrink wrapped the car so that we could remove the body when complete.

Foam panels were then added to the car to stiffen it up before another layer of fiberglass was added.

The new car body is still under development but we will release pictures when it is finally completed. We hope to be able to test the new body at Castle Coombe. We have also made some other modifications that we hope will improve performance.

To be continued......

Truro College Visit - Flemings left Hand Rule.

On Thursday the 26th of February two A' level physics students from Truro college (Lucy Talbot and Claude De-Rijke-Thomas) delivered a talk to the Penair Engineering club. Students were taught about 'Flemings left hand rule' and were shown, through diagrams and models, how motors work. The students were then tasked to construct their own motor.

The students all really enjoyed this session and would like to publicly thank Lucy, Claude and Paul for setting up and delivering this presentation.

Penair Engineering -  CUC visit

On the 9th of February 2015 Penair Engineering club and some of the science leaders group visited the Exeter university Penryn campus. The group met the team that entered the shell eco marathon with their hydrogen fuel cell car. They explained to us the features of their car and how the hydrogen and oxygen was split to store power that would be then used to power the motor. This inspired us to upload to the blog.




This is the chassis system devised to assemble and disassemble with
 no welding.











This is a model showing the miniature hydrogen fuel cells. the water is separated by the electricity from the solar cells, the motor is then connected to the fuel cell which has stored the hydrogen to make electricity.