In 2016, IEEE Spectrum spotlighted Ohio State University’s Buckeye Current staff, a bunch of engineering college students who dared to check their electrical motorbike’s mettle towards professionals within the grueling Pikes Peak International 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 had 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 pace data. In a collaboration with the staff’s sponsor, Monaco-based Venturi Group, college students began constructing and testing a completely new electrical motorbike, 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 pace data on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah through the Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials. The trials had been overseen by the Fédération Internationale de Motorcyclisme (FIM).
Rebuilding a Report-Setting Group
David Cooke, the senior affiliate director at OSU’s Center for Automotive Research, is the staff’s school 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 a complete sequence of races and was simply trying to resolve what it might do subsequent. Then the pandemic hit, and the staff shrank all the way down to nearly nothing.”
“On our final day at Bonneville, I advised the staff, ‘You began a number of weeks in the past as a terrific scholar membership, however you’re leaving as a racing staff.’” —David Cookie, OSU’s Heart for Automotive Analysis
Cooke remembers that the remnant was two college students who had been engaged on associated aspect initiatives, together with an electrical filth bike. They and Laura Friedmann, graduate scholar who lately earned her grasp’s diploma in mechanical engineering, shaped the nucleus of the revived Buckeye Present staff. In simply two years, they had been in a position to recruit new staff members, design and construct the RW-5 Voxan, and decide up a number of technical and undertaking 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’ve seven of those competitors groups, with a complete of about 300 college students, that function out of our facility,” says Cooke. “All advised, we’ve been taking part in competitions akin to Formula SAE and Baja SAE for 35 years, so there’s a whole lot of institutional information there. Even when the staff has youthful college students coming in, there’s at all times some senior folks round who know find out how to educate necessary expertise akin to machining, design, and find out how to arrange themselves for fast turnarounds on the monitor.”
Report-Setting Efficiency
The FIM assesses a motorbike’s pace utilizing a straight path measuring 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) lengthy. On the 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) mark, after the motorbike has reached its high pace, 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 motorbike interrupts a second laser beam that stops the timer. The remainder of the route gives room for the driving force to coast all the way down to a pace at which it’s secure to use the brakes.
The FIM makes use of a mean pace throughout two runs tried inside a two-hour window in its document concerns. Buckeye Present staff president Sabina Williams, a fourth-year scholar pursuing a bachelor’s diploma in mechanical engineering, says that by the point the Bike Velocity Trials started, the staff was in a position to accomplish the turnaround inside one hour.
The Buckeye Present staff entered the 148-kilogram RW-5 Voxan within the pace trials’ electrical motorbike 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 metallic items to deliver the RW-5 Voxan’s weight proper as much as the 150 kg restrict. The added weight, the staff figured, can be balanced out by enhancing the motorbike’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 stupendous 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 motorbike in perspective, take into account 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 Beyond AXM2 axial flux motor delivers. The electrical bike’s energy output is corresponding 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 package deal allowed the RW-5 Voxan to set new all-time pace data in 4 classes:
- Quickest common pace with out a fairing (an aerodynamic cowl designed to scale back turbulence): 271.323 km/h (168.59 mph) over one mile.
- Quickest common pace with out a fairing: 271.515 km/h (168.71 mph) over one kilometer.
- Quickest common pace with a fairing: 289.74 km/h (180.035 mph) over one mile.
- Quickest common pace 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 induced its motor to burn out. The staff changed it with a spare motor they occurred to have available. After working late into the night time calibrating the brand new motor, they had been in a position to 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 standard theme amongst electrical motorbike groups there, Williams says, was battling battery temperatures. The Buckeye Present staff had issue retaining 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 retaining its battery heat sufficient to race within the mornings when temperatures had been low. And all the groups confronted a relentless battle to maintain the salt from corroding their bikes’ metallic 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 pace and efficiency. “What we had on this staff had been a whole lot of actually vibrant aspiring engineers,” says Cooke. “However we didn’t have a single one that had expertise with race vehicles or on a racing staff. On our final day at Bonneville, I advised the staff, ‘You began a number of weeks in the past as a terrific scholar 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 throughout the subsequent yr.
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