Young engineering students, who are being encouraged to hone their skills through motorsport competition by taking part in the Formula Student competition, can now enhance their designs with free software licences from IPG Automotive.
IPG automotive, a German company based in Karlsruhe, has been offering free software licences for its Formula CarMaker program to help the students test and optimise their designs in a virtual environment.
During the 2014 season, 113 Formula Student teams and more teams from other IPG Automotive racing series were equipped with CarMaker and IPGKinematics licenses.
In addition to the traditional ways of educating students, the formula student race series enables budding young engineers to get hands on experience with designing a race car.
The latest European Altair Technology Conference (EATC), held in June, showcased the work of a number of young engineers, including participants in the Formula Student race from the Racetech team, based in Germany.
With the help of IPG Automotive's software, models can be integrated and altered during the concept phase, just as in the development process, in order to be able to test different functions before construction and carry out sensitivity analyses. IPGKinematics is also used for the chassis design. CarMaker allows users to test different setups and settings as well as observing the effects that optimisation has on lap times
A virtual vehicle, a virtual driver as well as the virtual traffic infrastructure (streets, racing tracks, objects) are available for students in the virtual environment. With the graphical user interface of CarMaker, designers can easily simulate different settings individually. The results can be monitored in detail in IPGControl, whereas IPGMovie serves to immediately visualise the consequences of setting changes.
In Germany, the Formula Student Germany (FSG) has been annually organized since 2006 by the Formula Student Germany sponsored by the VereinDeutscherIngenieure. Here, several teams from different universities compete against each other for the top honours.
This summer, 115 teams competed at the Hockenheimring with their racecars in various events. In addition to placement on the track, the construction, business plan as well as required costs are taken into consideration during evaluation.
In addition to the Formula Student, IPG Automotive supports the racing series Shell Eco Marathon, Supra SAE India as well as Baja SAE India. IPG Automotive supports not only German teams; Europe-wide and worldwide, many teams are successfully underway with the help of CarMaker and IPGKinematics. International teams compete in Brazil, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, and Turkey.
Corresponding to the current developments on the vehicle market as well as in motor sports, there are also continued developments such as the Formula Student Electric (FSE) in addition to the classic races. Here, solely electric-powered racing vehicles are developed, for instance by the KARaceIng team from the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology, who presented their 2014 season vehicle at the Technology Conference apply & innovate 2014, fascinating the audience.
