TU Darmstadt Racing Team e.V. – Mobile Data Acquisition Using Strain Gauges and the QuantumX From HBM

The TU Darmstadt Racing Team (DART) is a group of university students from the Technical University of Darmstadt that have been participating in the Formula Student international design competition since 2005. Students from various disciplines have been independently working on developing and producing an electrically powered Formula racing car and have been competing against other teams from all over the world year after year.

Driven by the passion for motorsport, a new racing car will also be developed in the 2020 season. In September of 2019, DART, with the support of HBM, launched a project to validate and analyze the chassis using HBM equipment. To detect the forces acting in the wishbones and tie rods during driving, strain gauges (SG) were installed and the test vehicle was equipped with appropriate electronics. Future developments and the optimization of the chassis will be based on the collected data.

Results

After the setup and commissioning of all the hardware and software, test runs were carried out on an airfield where different test tracks were set up. To test as closely as possible to the conditions given by Formula Student and to identify the maximum loads, chicanes with fast load changes as well as wide curves were driven.

For example, the maximum forces recorded during the test in the right-hand tie rod were equivalent to 1702 N for tensile force and 961 N for compressive force. Comparing the data obtained by the measurements to those provided by the camera allowed the evaluation of which load case these values corresponded to. The maximum tensile force was measured during oversteering in a fast left-hander and the maximum compressive force in a wide right-hander at high speed.