Description
About the "Race Track Setup / Race Car Vehicle Dynamics" series of courses:
Part 1) Race Car Vehicle Dynamics - Fundamental Theory
Part 2) Race Car Vehicle Dynamics - Advanced Theory and Application (This course)
Part 3) Race Track Setup - High Downforce Race Car
All 3 parts added together as a bundle deal: Race Track Setup Masterclass - From Theory to Solutions
Race car setup to achieve the best lap times without resorting to tedious trial and error involves understanding both vehicle dynamics as well as aerodynamics, and being able to put it all together to make quick but accurate setup changes.
Tires, springs, anti roll bars, aero, dampers, tire pressure, wheel alignment, gearing, limited slip differential settings... all have an influence on your ability to achieve a faster lap time. Typical online setup guides or software offer multiple solutions for each individual handling problem, leaving racers having to resort to trial and error, and traditional text books are too long and theory dense to be of help to the typical racer or even race engineer, who just wants to solve a handling problem and go faster.
This series of courses is the filtered and condensed summary of how to get to the fastest setup, the result of having spent 19 years on vehicle dynamics being a sim racer, setting up my own cars for track days at Spa, Zandvoort, Nurburgring, and working for the past 9 years in automotive chassis development (currently active suspension controls).
The course offers a filtered/condensed view on vehicle dynamics, aerodynamics, before focusing on a holistic view on achieving the best race car setup up to and including a high downforce race car:
- the correct and logical order to tackle all the setup variables
- how each of these setup variables influence handling and how each one is optimized
- how to tackle handling problems in an existing car setup
- only as much theory as needed for each component to help you achieve the perfect setup
Take this course
💡
Who this course is for:
- Sim racers, motor sport enthusiasts, Formula SAE/Student engineers.
What you'll learn
- The 3 components to load transfer and their relative importance in vehicle handling - kinematic, dynamic, elastic.
- Trade offs in vehicle suspension setup in heave, pitch, roll and warp.
- Effects of static weight distribution and cross diagonal weight jacking on vehicle handling.
- Effects of kingpin inclination, caster angle and tire pressure on vehicle handling.
- Differences between steady state and transient handling and how they relate to both setup and driver input.
Requirements
- Having taken the course: Race Car Vehicle Dynamics - Fundamental Theory
- OR: Good understanding of the high goals of car setup, how drivers' feel of oversteer/understeer is measured, yaw acceleration capability, tire slip angles/ratios/saturation/camber/pressure effects, source of load transfer.
Course content
- Setting up a road biased sports car in logical steps
- Changing handling balance with tire static loads, alignment, tire temperature
- Changing handling balance for different corner types with brakes & differential
- Suspension setup - trade offs, rates, frequencies, tuning and problem solving
- Logical steps to setting up a low downforce race car
- (Many more)
Instructor
Shi Yan, CEng MIMechE
Senior Expert Active Suspension Systems at major automaker
