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 in opposition to 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 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 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 pace data on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah through the Bonneville Bike Pace Trials. The trials had been overseen by the Fédération Internationale de Motorcyclisme (FIM).
Rebuilding a Document-Setting Staff
David Cooke, the senior affiliate director at OSU’s Heart 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 seeking to resolve what it could do subsequent. Then the pandemic hit, and the staff shrank all the way down to virtually nothing.”
“On our final day at Bonneville, I instructed the staff, ‘You began a couple of weeks in the past as an ideal 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 tasks, together with an electrical grime bike. They and Laura Friedmann, graduate scholar who just 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 capable of recruit new staff members, design and construct the RW-5 Voxan, and decide up a bunch of technical and mission administration abilities 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 instructed, we’ve been taking part in competitions equivalent to Formulation SAE and Baja SAE for 35 years, so there’s plenty of institutional information there. Even when the staff has youthful college students coming in, there’s all the time some senior individuals round who know the best way to educate vital abilities equivalent to machining, design, and the best way to set up themselves for fast turnarounds on the observe.”
Document-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 bike 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 report 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 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 report issues. 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 Pace 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 pace 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 deliver 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 a substitute of driving on grippy asphalt on a phenomenal 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, take into account the enduring 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 similar 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 cut 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 precipitated 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 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 major problem I used to be proud to see the staff overcome,” says Williams.
A standard theme amongst electrical bike groups there, Williams says, was scuffling with battery temperatures. The Buckeye Present staff had issue protecting 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 protecting its battery heat sufficient to race within the mornings when temperatures had been low. And the entire groups confronted a relentless struggle to maintain the salt from corroding their bikes’ steel elements.
The world report achievements not solely spotlight the continued success of the Buckeye Present staff but additionally underscore the potential of electrical bikes to set new benchmarks in pace and efficiency. “What we had on this staff had been plenty of actually shiny 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 instructed the staff, ‘You began a couple of weeks in the past as an ideal 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 objective: Eclipsing the 200 mile-per-hour (322-kilometer-per-hour) mark throughout the subsequent yr.
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