0-100 in 0.9 Seconds, Built by Students
Summary
TLDRStudents from the Swiss university AMZ Racing broke the world record for 0-60 mph acceleration, hitting it in just 0.956 seconds. To achieve this, they started with a Formula Student base car and modified it extensively - doubling the power with custom motors, adding fans underneath to generate huge downforce, and implementing active torque vectoring. This combination allowed them to accelerate over twice as quickly as an F1 car by maximizing grip and powertrain strength. Though further improvements were possible, they stopped at 0.956 seconds due to budget and time constraints.
Takeaways
- 🚗 AMZ Racing from ETH Zurich set a new world acceleration record, achieving 0 to 100 km/h in under 1 second, surpassing the previous record of 1.46 seconds.
- 🖥 The project utilized the base of a Formula Student car, chosen for its light weight, small frontal area, and availability, but heavily modified to withstand the unique demands of extreme acceleration.
- 💧 Innovative use of fan-assisted downforce significantly increased grip by creating low pressure under the car, a method unrestricted by traditional racing regulations.
- 📈 The team's engineering approach focused on three core areas: increasing power, enhancing grip through aerodynamics, and reinforcing the vehicle's structural integrity.
- 🛤️ The suspension system was specifically designed to maintain optimal downforce by keeping the car's floor aligned with the ground, using a hydraulically connected suspension.
- 🛠 Each wheel was powered by its own motor, allowing precise control over torque distribution, critical for managing the car's extreme acceleration.
- 💡 Exploiting a loophole in the rules, the team chose to run the record attempt uphill, requiring only one attempt instead of averaging two runs in opposite directions.
- 💪 Despite the potential for even greater acceleration, the project's ambitions were limited by the structural integrity of the chassis and the practicalities of cost and time.
- 📱 Partnership with Brilliant.org highlights the educational aspect of the project, emphasizing the learning opportunities in complex engineering concepts through interactive courses.
- 💻 The success of AMZ Racing illustrates the importance of interdisciplinary skills in engineering, teamwork, and project management, preparing students for future careers in high-performance industries like Formula 1.
Q & A
What was the previous world record for 0-60 mph acceleration that AMZ Racing aimed to break?
-The previous world record was 1.46 seconds, held by the University of Stuttgart.
How did AMZ Racing generate more downforce for better grip?
-They used fans mounted under the floor to create an area of low pressure that sucked the car into the ground. They also used carbon fiber skirts around the sides to seal the floor.
Why did AMZ Racing need a special suspension system?
-They needed a suspension system that was stiff enough to maintain the car's attitude and floor height under acceleration, but compliant enough to absorb vibrations.
What was innovative about the powertrain design?
-It used 4 separate in-wheel motors, one powering each wheel independently. This allowed precise torque vectoring.
How did the control system maximize traction at launch?
-It measured wheel speeds and slip values to dynamically control the torque to each wheel, reducing wheelspin.
Why did AMZ Racing run the car uphill slightly?
-The rules stated only 1 run was needed uphill, rather than 2 runs on flat ground. This reduced variability.
What were the 3 main focus areas for the car?
-Having enough power, generating enough downforce and grip, and ensuring the chassis was strong enough.
How was AMZ Racing able to break the 1 second barrier?
-Through extensive engineering and innovation in aerodynamics, powertrain, and vehicle dynamics.
What was the final record time achieved by AMZ Racing?
-0.956 seconds from 0-62 mph, over 30% faster than the previous record.
What limited AMZ Racing from going even faster?
-The structural integrity of the chassis. More power or downforce would have caused it to break.
Outlines
😀 Introducing the ambitious project to break the 1-second 0-60 mph record
The paragraph introduces the AMZ Racing team's ambitious project to break the 1.46 second 0-60 mph acceleration record, with a target under 1 second. It provides background on the team and record attempts, and sets up the main topics of having enough power, grip, and structural integrity to achieve the goal.
😲 Using floor fans for maximum downforce even at 0 mph
This paragraph explains the innovative use of floor fans to generate downforce by creating areas of low pressure under the vehicle. This allows maximum downforce even when stationary, which is critical for acceleration from 0 mph. It discusses the tradeoffs of fan downforce vs aerodynamics at speed.
😮💨 Over-engineering the suspension for grip and attitude control
The paragraph covers the importance of suspension setup for this record attempt, to manage load transfer while maintaining floor seal. It explains the need for a stiff yet supple suspension, leading to the solution of a hydraulically interconnected setup that controls attitude.
🚗 Finding loopholes and optimizing for one fast uphill run
This paragraph reveals how the team found loopholes regarding running on a flat track, allowing them to optimize for one fast uphill run only. It suggests they were mainly limited by chassis integrity, cost and time rather than outright performance potential.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Downforce
💡Drag
💡Grip
💡Acceleration
💡Wheel Spin
💡Powertrain
💡Torque Vectoring
💡Tires
💡Suspension
💡Aerodynamics
Highlights
Students from AMZ racing smashed the world record for fastest 0-62mph acceleration, achieving sub-1 second time
The team used fans on the floor to generate huge downforce, unrestricted by normal racing rules
They designed the car from scratch, only keeping the tub, seats, tires and a few other parts from a Formula Student car
The suspension was crucial to maintain consistent ride height and floor seal at high speeds
Each wheel has its own motor, allowing precise torque vectoring without differential or gearbox
They doubled the power output compared to a normal Formula Student car, focusing on the rear tires
With no mechanical linkage between wheels, computers precisely manage torque to prevent wheelspin
They found a loophole - running slightly uphill so only one timed run was needed, removing variability
The car itself became the limitation, not enough strength in chassis and suspension to go even faster
Unlike racing, where stability and driver control are key, here computers maximize performance
Fans generate huge downforce when stationary unlike normal aero; this was key for initial launch
They used the standard Formula Student tire, just with more load from downforce squeezing it into the ground
The team had to balance ambitious performance targets with real-world limitations
The 1 second target represented over 30% improvement on previous record - a huge leap
It required huge collaboration between multiple engineering disciplines to succeed
Transcripts
this car goes from not to 62 mph in
0.956 over a second n to 60 is the
classic acceleration test one that we
all grew up using to compare cars a
Formula 1 car would do it in about 2 and
1/2 seconds the fastest production car a
rimac NAA will do it in
1.7 and my trusty old VW Pat will do it
in about
eight oh come on that but a group of
students from AMZ racing based at the
Swiss University eth zorich made a car
accelerate faster than anything else in
the world and smashed the previous
record of 1.46 seconds so I spoke with
ELO russet from AMZ racing to understand
exactly how these ambitious students
approached this crazy project what
challenges they needed to overcome and
how they engineered a car that
accelerates more than twice as quickly
as an F1 car and we said hey we do it
and we go all in we aim for one second
let's see what happens this record which
is actually not to 100 km an hour is one
that's been battled over for a long time
last being broken in 2022 by the
University of stutgart at 1.46 seconds
the teams typically use a base of a
formula student car and if you didn't
know formula student is fantastic where
University students from around the
world design build test and race a
formula Style Racing Car the aim is to
give students experience in Practical
engineering as well as teamwork and
project management and it's many of
these students who end up working in
Formula 1 so AMZ racing used the base of
a formula student car as it's light has
a small frontal area which is good for
low drag and they also had one available
but it wasn't just a case of adding more
power to an existing formula student car
the problem is you don't design a
formula student car for this kind of
loads because at the current record you
have to put like really high loads on
all the suspension parts for the
aerodynamic Force the power that you
need is much higher than for racing
competition so you have to modify very
heavily and AMZ Racing's Target wasn't
just to beat the old record they were
ambitious and they wanted to break the 1
second threshold that's over 30% faster
than the previous record which is a huge
amount so put simply this project is all
about three things having enough power
to accelerate quickly having enough grip
to transfer that power through the tires
into the asphalt and making the
powertrain chassis and suspension strong
enough not to bend or break while doing
it so in order to get to their target
they needed a car that was Stronger had
more grip and was more powerful to plan
out such an ambitious project the team
needed to go back to the drawing board
and figure out what was really required
and as you might have guessed their
standard formula student car wasn't up
to the task so the the team stripped
back everything from this car and were
only left with the tub the seats the
tires and a few of bits but their main
focus was going to be on grip and power
and a surprising loophole in the rules
which I'll explain later now some of the
topics I'm going to talk about are
pretty complicated even though I do my
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now back to these genius students so
first let's talk about the grip the most
interesting part here is the car's floor
as we know a lot of the downforce of
formula type cars comes from the floor
typically the air flows under the car
and gets accelerated causing an area of
low pressure which sucks the floor
towards the ground this means that the
tires are pressed into the track harder
and so gives the car more grip and that
works pretty well but it's by no means
the best way to add down Force to a race
car but the problem with race series at
least for the engineers is that they
have rules and over the years Regulators
have banned various types of design that
create downforce a few examples include
flat floors which were banned in 1994
after Sen's death side skirts which were
banned in the 80s and the famous Bram
fan car which was withdrawn from
competition in 1978 but for the N to 100
record there are no such rules and so
the team's first Port of Call for
generating more grip was the floor and
plenty of fan assisted downforce and the
concept was pretty simple we put a a fan
on the floor we put some skirts around
it to seal it the fans here are doing
the same job as organic aerodynamics
creating low pressure under the car to
suck it down into the ground look at how
effective the fans are just watch the
whole car get sucked into the track here
but why are fans more effective than
normal Arrow well for a couple of
reasons first you can place the fans
wherever you want changing the center of
pressure second you can control the fan
speed therefore controlling the amount
of downforce and most importantly when
normal Arrow needs the car to be moving
to work fans don't and when trying to
break a record that begins from a
standing start that's very important you
can have maximum downforce at 0 mph but
things do get more complicated as the
car starts to accelerate in the
traditional formula car the underside is
a bit like an upside down airplane wing
sucking the car to the track and with
this type of underfloor more speed and
more air means more grip but the AMZ
racing car is slightly different their
floor is completely flat there's no
diffuser it's basically a flat rectangle
of carbon between the four wheels and
there's no diffuser to speed up the air
while the car is moving it means that
the floor by itself is not creating any
downforce instead we have the fans and
while not moving this works incredibly
well the skirts on the side of the floor
seal it to the ground and the fans
easily remove enough air to suck it down
and load up the tires which is great for
the initial getaway but when the car
starts moving more air comes in the
front of the floor meaning the pressure
under the floor isn't as low and so
there's less grip and there are other
issues as well as soon as the car starts
moving the defects and bumps in the
track surface means that the seal at the
side of the floor isn't as good and it
allows air from outside the floor to
leak in and again reduce suction so with
air rushing in at the front of the floor
and air leaking in from the side the
team needed more fan power but with so
many unknowns it was difficult to know
exactly how many fans were required so
we kind of overkilled it we pled to put
like six eight fans and at the end we
work only two as for the skirts that
seal the side of the floor these are
made from shaped carbon fiber that rub
along the floor in order to offer the
very best seal now of course that means
that they wear out pretty quickly but
they're so important to the grip that
the team just changed them when they're
needed by the way if you're a student
watching this I have something for you
I've realized that we have many students
watching driver 61 content who are
interested in getting a job in
Motorsport so I've spoken to a couple of
my friends in the industry and we're
going to host a few free seminars on how
to best prepare yourself for getting a
job in Motorsport if that sounds
interesting go to dri 61.com
students for more information so on to
the suspension as this was a straight
line record you might think that the
suspension isn't that important after
all there aren't any corners but the
suspension and so the control of the
floor height has a big effect on the
downforce that's generated remember most
of the grip comes from the floor and the
fans and if the seal at the edge of the
floor is broken we lose a lot of grip so
imagine the AMZ racing car with a really
soft suspension the car accelerates away
from standing at 3G and the load going
through the suspension is huge so then
the rear suspension compresses and the
front suspension lifts but the real
issue here is the car's floor the edge
of it has gone from being perfectly
parallel with the ground to the rear of
the floor being much closer than the
front and with a larger Gap at the front
it will leak pressure reducing the car's
grip so so what's the solution well
maybe you think that as we're not going
around any Corners we don't really need
the suspension that maybe you can make
the suspension solid a bit like a
go-kart and this is something that was
actually tried by Williams F1 in the80s
but that's another story the problem
with a solid suspension is that even
going in a straight line you still need
some suspension to absorb the initial
acceleration and small bumps in the
track otherwise you'd only have the tire
acting as the spring and without any
damping the car would likely bounce
awkwardly down the track and if it's
bouncing it's also breaking the seal
down the side of the floor so the
suspension needs to be stiff enough to
deal with about 200 kg of dam Force but
soft enough to deal with any vibrations
and bumps and so the answer was simple a
fully uh multicouple suspension with
hydraulically connected components you
may have heard of hydraulically
connected suspension or freck what the
freak front to rear inter suspension in
Formula 1 it's not an active suspension
like we saw in F1 in the '90s but a
passive system that works by
hydraulically connecting the front and
rear suspensions this linkage helps
maintain a consistent ride height and
car attitude under different conditions
like acceleration breaking and cornering
the system was actually first introduced
in Formula 1 by the Mercedes team and
their then technical director Aldo Costa
this Innovative system debuted in 2011
and represented a big development in
Formula 1 but was banned by the FIA in
2014 anyway this system allows the AMZ
racing team to keep the suspension
suppled enough to absorb the bumps but
also stiff enough especially under
acceleration keep the car's floor
correctly aligned with the ground so we
have the dam Force we have the
suspension just the tires powertrain and
that little loophole to go when I spoke
with Eloy I expected the team to be
using some super soft customade tackier
than blue tack type of tire however the
team just used the standard formula
Student Competition Tire the huia lc0 I
also expected the team to use super low
tire pressures like those used in
dragster races to achieve maximum grip
however they didn't deviate too far from
the standard tie pressures and this
decision makes sense because tires
aren't solid they can press Under
Pressure which again affects the
distance between the car's floor and the
ground and as we know that's really
important however although they did run
quite standard tire pressures the
relative pressure was essentially lower
because there's more vertical load going
through the tires the same tire pressure
essentially means that the tire is being
squashed more so onto the powertrain
with acceleration being the thing here
of course the car is four-wheel drive
and to me this is one of the most
interesting Innovations in Formula
student our usual formula student cars
have uh four Motors so one on each wheel
we have a tradition in our team to
self-design the motors ever since the
beginning of the electric class in 2009
yes each wheel has its own tiny motor
that weighs around 3 Kg the car has no
differential no drive shafts and no
gearbox which is interesting because it
means that you can control the torque to
each wheel individually but more on that
later a typical formula student car is
restricted to 80 KW of power that's
about 107 horsepower with the team knew
that this wasn't going to be enough so
they set sights on doubling the power
and as the rear the car has the most
grip thanks to weight transfer and the
position of the car's floor the rear
tires have more grip than the fronts and
so this was the area for development we
redesigned at the back which is where we
could use most of the potential and we
basically doubled the power so we made a
completely new version of the motors we
just made it a bit longer uh put double
the torque so the car now has enough
power but how is that power controlled
remember this acceleration is insane
less than a second to 62 mph get some
wheel spin have a slide and the car has
spun out or worse before the driver has
even realized now that's of course the
worst case scenario but what's more
relevant is how a human driver would
maximize the grip on each individual
Tire with reaction times of about 2/10
of a second and an inability to control
Power to each wheel individually there's
simply no way a human can get the most
from a launch so instead the driver just
puts his foot to the floor and then the
computers take over you just have to
tell your body like whatever happens
pedal to the floor and see you at the
end there's a lot going on under the
Bodywork here in order to direct the
perfect amount of torque to each of the
wheels the first task for the control
system is to understand the speed of the
car and for that it uses a speed sensing
laser that you might have seen in F1 it
points at the ground and measures speed
200 times per second then the car has a
speed sensor on each individual wheel
that way the system can compare comp the
speed of the car against the speed of
each individual wheel and so calculate
if any of the wheels has wheel spin once
it knows this it will allow each wheel
to slip up to a certain calculated point
but if the slip increases too far then
the torque to that wheel will be reduced
allowing the wheel spin to be reduced
and keeping the car on the straight and
narrow and all of these calculations
have to be applied very quickly and very
precisely it's quite tricky because like
you can have quite big accidents if
something go
sideways it's uh something that in
testing when we were like at lower power
we also saw that okay if something's not
safe it's a bit scary so what happened
on the day of the world record itself
well let's talk about the choice of
location first and this is where the
team found a great loophole in the rules
I would have thought that a downhill
piece of asphalt would be the best
option for this record and it likely
would be but the rules just don't allow
you to do that so the next best option
is a perfectly flat piece of track right
well actually no the world record rules
state that if running on a flat surface
the car must complete the run twice in
both directions then the average time of
the two runs is taken for the official
record however the AMZ team obviously
have a great future in Formula 1 as they
found a better way around the rules if
the run is uphill just a little only one
run is necessary when we broke the
record in 2016 I checked the data and I
checked the times because they did I
think 10 runs in a row or maybe a bit
more we saw that the variability was up
to half a tenth of a second so that's
quite a lot for all the effort that you
do to get that fast so then we said hey
if we can do only one run slightly
uphill it's better than having the
variability yes they needed to drive
uphill slightly which is slower but it
meant they could really push on one run
and not need to worry about replicating
the same speed and for the team it was
more than worth it so if you have the
engineering mindset you might be asking
yourself why didn't they go even faster
well remember this record was about the
combination of power grip and making
sure the car didn't break and it seems
that the car breaking would have been
the limiting factor we saw that the
limitation that we had was on one side
the structural integrity at some point
the chassis cannot deal with more loads
ELO mentioned that they could have
turned up the fans and they could have
had a bit more power I'm more power baby
but next the or the suspension likely
would have broken and designing and
building a brand new chassis is just
very expensive both in terms of time and
money the team managed to smash through
the previous record and break through
the 1 second barrier and at some point
these projects unfortunately just need
to stop so we we achieved that so at
that point you have to also get back to
normal life thanks to AMZ Racing for the
help with this video and Eloy for the
interview which you can watch in full
under dri 61's podcast Channel and all
podcast platforms thanks for watching
and I'll see you in the next one
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