Systems / Catalogue

Every behaviour has a cause. Every claim needs a measurement.

Examine the relationships between airflow, motion, energy and the signals that describe them.

OUTPUT: drag coefficient (illustrative)

Aerodynamics

Drag is the visible cost of pushing a shape through air. We separate it by zone — nose, wheels, underbody, cooling flow and wake — so that each change can be argued from the flow field and then checked against a measurement.

Methodology

Frame the question as a budget: which zones contribute to drag, lift and cooling flow, and by how much relative to the baseline.
Use CFD to rank candidate changes, wind-tunnel testing to measure the short list, and a correlation plan to say how far each can be trusted.
Report the change in CdA (drag coefficient × frontal area) together with the test conditions, not Cd alone.

Deliverables

Zone-by-zone drag and lift budget
CFD-to-tunnel correlation plan
Pressure-tap and wake-rake instrumentation layout

Constraints

Packaging, cooling and crash structures limit how far any surface can move.
Tunnel blockage, floor simulation and wheel rotation change what a result means.
Road conditions — yaw, turbulence, temperature — are never identical to the test section.

Open aerodynamics Related dossier

OUTPUT: settling time after input (illustrative)

Vehicle dynamics

Handling is a transient problem. We model the vehicle as a small number of masses, springs and dampers, look at how quickly each disturbance dies away, and keep the model simple enough that every assumption can be inspected.

Methodology

Start from a one-corner (quarter-car) model and add degrees of freedom only when the measurement demands them.
Compare damping ratio, natural frequency and settling time across configurations instead of single peak values.
Plan track or rig tests with the same input repeated, so that differences come from the vehicle and not from the driver.

Deliverables

Parameter sweep of spring rate and damping
Step and impulse response comparison
Rig-test plan with repeatability criteria

Constraints

Real dampers are non-linear and tyres are compliant; the simple model ignores both.
Motion ratios, bushing compliance and friction shift effective stiffness.
Response depends on load, speed and surface — a single curve is never the whole story.

Open vehicle dynamics Related dossier

OUTPUT: efficiency map, % (illustrative)

Powertrain

A powertrain is judged where it actually operates, not at its peak. We map efficiency over speed and torque, overlay the duty a programme demands, and follow the lost energy to where it becomes heat that something must remove.

Methodology

Describe the operating envelope as torque against speed: a constant-torque region, then a constant-power region.
Overlay representative duty points on the efficiency map to see which regions matter.
Carry the losses into a thermal model so that cooling and packaging are decided together with the electrical design.

Deliverables

Efficiency map with duty overlay
Loss breakdown by component
Thermal envelope with cooling requirement

Constraints

Efficiency maps are measured on a dynamometer at a controlled temperature; hot and cold behaviour differ.
Losses vary with switching strategy and DC-link voltage.
Peak efficiency is rarely where the vehicle spends its time.

Open powertrain Related dossier

OUTPUT: validated channels at stated sample rates (illustrative)

Electronics & data

Every claim in the other three disciplines rests on a signal. We specify sensors, sample rates and clocks, then pass each channel through checks for range, rate of change and timestamp consistency before an engineer sees it.

Methodology

Choose sample rates from the bandwidth of the phenomenon, with anti-alias filtering before sampling.
Timestamp as close to the sensor as the hardware allows, and record how clocks are synchronised.
Validate in a pipeline: range, rate, dropout and cross-channel plausibility, with every rejection logged.

Deliverables

Channel list with rates, ranges and filters
Clock and synchronisation design
Validation pipeline with event log

Constraints

Bus arbitration and logger buffering add jitter to arrival times.
Filters delay signals; the delay differs per channel.
More channels mean more bandwidth, more wiring and more things that can fail.

Open electronics & data Related dossier