In 2016, IEEE Spectrum spotlighted Ohio State College’s Buckeye Present crew, a bunch of engineering college students who dared to check their electrical motorbike’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 crew have been holdovers from the Pike’s Peak days. The crew roster wasn’t the one change. That 12 months, the Buckeye Present crew shifted its focus from conquering mountains to shattering land pace information. In a collaboration with the crew’s sponsor, Monaco-based Venturi Group, college students began constructing and testing a completely new electrical motorbike, the RW-5 Voxan.
In August, the Buckeye Present crew and the RW-5 Voxan, piloted by Venturi’s head of engineering, Louis-Marie Blondel, set 4 new world pace information on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah throughout the Bonneville Bike Pace Trials. The trials have been overseen by the Fédération Internationale de Motorcyclisme (FIM).
Rebuilding a Document-Setting Group
David Cooke, the senior affiliate director at OSU’s Heart for Automotive Analysis, is the crew’s college advisor. He says the profitable Pikes Peak crew was scattered by the COVID-19 pandemic. “The timing was horrible,” he says. “The crew had simply wrapped up an entire sequence of races and was simply seeking to determine what it could do subsequent. Then the pandemic hit, and the crew shrank right down to virtually nothing.”
“On our final day at Bonneville, I advised the crew, ‘You began just a few weeks in the past as an important pupil membership, however you’re leaving as a racing crew.’” —David Cookie, OSU’s Heart for Automotive Analysis
Cooke remembers that the remnant was two college students who have been engaged on associated aspect tasks, together with an electrical filth bike. They and Laura Friedmann, graduate pupil who not too long ago earned her grasp’s diploma in mechanical engineering, shaped the nucleus of the revived Buckeye Present crew. In simply two years, they have been in a position to recruit new crew 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 fast bounce-back to OSU’s wealthy institutional information. “We’ve got seven of those competitors groups, with a complete of about 300 college students, that function out of our facility,” says Cooke. “All advised, we’ve been taking part in competitions resembling Components SAE and Baja SAE for 35 years, so there’s plenty of institutional information there. Even when the crew has youthful college students coming in, there’s all the time some senior folks round who know how you can train vital abilities resembling machining, design, and how you can set up themselves for fast turnarounds on the observe.”
Document-Setting Efficiency
The FIM assesses a bike’s pace utilizing a straight path measuring 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) lengthy. On the 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) mark, after the motorbike has reached its prime 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 motorbike interrupts a second laser beam that stops the timer. The remainder of the route offers room for the motive force to coast right 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 crew president Sabina Williams, a fourth-year pupil pursuing a bachelor’s diploma in mechanical engineering, says that by the point the Bike Pace Trials started, the crew was in a position to accomplish the turnaround inside one hour.
The Buckeye Present crew entered the 148-kilogram RW-5 Voxan within the pace trials’ electrical motorbike 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 crew added specifically machined metallic items to deliver the RW-5 Voxan’s weight proper as much as the 150 kg restrict. The added weight, the crew figured, can be balanced out by bettering the motorbike’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 an exquisite Sunday,” he says, “you’re driving on a floor whose traction approximates asphalt after something from a light-weight rain to snow and ice.”
To place the Buckeye Present crew’s motorbike 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 akin to that of Ducati’s Panigale V2, a gasoline-powered, street-legal sport bike that weighs in at 200 kg.
The Buckeye crew’s profitable pairing of middleweight energy in a light-weight package deal allowed the RW-5 Voxan to set new all-time pace information in 4 classes:
- Quickest common pace with no fairing (an aerodynamic cowl designed to scale back turbulence): 271.323 km/h (168.59 mph) over one mile.
- Quickest common pace with no 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 information are nonetheless pending validation by FIM.
New Challenges for Buckeye Present
Although there was no mountain to climb this time round, the Ohio State crew nonetheless confronted challenges. Whereas prepping in Utah, Williams says that racing the bike at or close to peak energy prompted its motor to burn out. The crew changed it with a spare motor they occurred to have readily available. After working late into the evening calibrating the brand new motor, they have been in a position to 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 crew overcome,” says Williams.
A typical theme amongst electrical motorbike groups there, Williams says, was battling battery temperatures. The Buckeye Present crew had problem preserving its machine’s 567-volt lithium-ion battery pack cool within the warmth of the salt flats. Williams notes that one other crew had issues preserving its battery heat sufficient to race within the mornings when temperatures have been low. And the entire groups confronted a continuing battle to maintain the salt from corroding their bikes’ metallic components.
The world report achievements not solely spotlight the continued success of the Buckeye Present crew but in addition underscore the potential of electrical bikes to set new benchmarks in pace and efficiency. “What we had on this crew have been plenty of actually vibrant aspiring engineers,” says Cooke. “However we didn’t have a single one that had expertise with race vehicles or on a racing crew. On our final day at Bonneville, I advised the crew, ‘You began just a few weeks in the past as an important pupil membership, however you’re leaving as a racing crew.’” Williams says the newly minted race crew now has its sights set on a brand new purpose: Eclipsing the 200 mile-per-hour (322-kilometer-per-hour) mark inside the subsequent 12 months.
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