0-100 in 0.9 Seconds, Built by Students

Summary

Students 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

00:00

😀 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.

05:02

😲 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.

10:03

😮‍💨 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.

15:04

🚗 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.

Keywords

💡Downforce

Downforce is a downward aerodynamic force created by the shape and design of a car. It pushes the car's tires harder into the track, increasing grip. AMZ Racing used fans under the floor to generate high levels of downforce for maximum grip on launch.

💡Drag

Drag is aerodynamic resistance, forces that slow down a moving car. AMZ Racing designed their car to have very low drag by using a small frontal area and flat floor to reduce resistance.

💡Grip

Grip refers to the friction between a car's tires and the track surface. More grip allows more power to be put down and higher cornering speeds. AMZ focused heavily on maximizing grip through downforce and powertrain control.

💡Acceleration

Acceleration measures how quickly a vehicle can increase its speed. The goal for AMZ was maximizing acceleration from 0-60 mph to break the world record.

💡Wheel Spin

Wheel spin happens when a driven wheel rotates faster than the speed of the car. Too much wheel spin causes loss of control. AMZ's systems precisely controlled wheel spin on launch.

💡Powertrain

The powertrain includes all components that generate power and deliver it to the wheels. AMZ used 4 high-power motors and sophisticated control systems in their powertrain.

💡Torque Vectoring

Torque vectoring means controlling the torque delivered to each wheel individually. This was critical to maximize grip and acceleration for AMZ's 4-wheel drive car.

💡Tires

The tires play a crucial role in grip. AMZ used special skirts and fans to keep the car's floor sealed evenly to the ground for maximum tire grip.

💡Suspension

The suspension absorbs bumps and controls ride height. AMZ used a stiff interconnected suspension to maintain optimal ride height for the floor's downforce.

💡Aerodynamics

Aerodynamics is the study of how air flows around objects. AMZ focused heavily on using fans and floor shape to optimize aerodynamics for straight line acceleration.

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

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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

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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