JEDDAH: When McLaren Racing teammates Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris took first and second places at the Italian Grand Prix in September, the gap between them was just 1.747 seconds.
If both had run just a few seconds slower on Monza, the fastest track in Formula 1, they would have fallen from the podium into midfield.
That’s why F1 teams spend tens of millions of dollars annually to optimize their cars’ aerodynamics, fuel combustion, and telemetry – all in pursuit of a hundredth of a second advantage per lap.
But when all 10 teams compete in Jeddah on December 5 for the first Saudi Grand Prix – on the fastest street circuit ever, with an estimated average speed of 156 mph (252 km / h) – only McLaren will become a home grown advantage.
In 2018, the team signed a five-year research partnership agreement with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology – the Saudi equivalent of MIT – to treat their vehicles as living laboratories. In return, the students and lecturers at KAUST would bring their know-how in software, sensor technology and chemistry to master a unique challenge: navigating the corners and straights of the Corniche of Jeddah a few seconds faster than everyone else.
Matteo Parsani, Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at KAUST, said: “Why is an F1 car faster on the track than a Grand Prix motorcycle that can reach speeds of 300 km / h? Aerodynamics. The manipulation of the air around the vehicle is the biggest differentiator in Formula 1. “
For example, greater downforce allows the driver to take corners at higher speeds, which is handy on a circuit with 27 corners.
Traditionally, teams turned to wind tunnel testing, which was both costly and time consuming. More recently, F1 introduced Computational Fluid Dynamics, which uses the computing power at the supercomputer level to massively simulate and optimize the flow of air over surfaces. Brute force will only get teams so far, however.
The sport’s extensive regulations include strict caps on the number of hours the central processing unit can use, meaning that the most elegant algorithm will win the day. To this end, Parsani and his colleagues at KAUST McLaren’s Extreme Computing Research Center have licensed the exclusive use of their state-of-the-art solver, which is successful where commercial tools fail to accurately model turbulent air currents – the bane of motorists.
AN AMBITIOUS JOURNEY
Aerodynamics is just part of the partnership’s ambitious agenda, which has expanded from performing on the track to supporting McLaren’s decades of commitment to carbon neutrality and supporting science, technology, engineering and math.
Mark Barnett, Director of Research and Innovation at McLaren Racing said, “KAUST’s world-class research and development facilities, faculty leaders and a desire to combine new technology with sustainability initiatives continue to help our team on our ambitious journey.”
But what originally led the team to KAUST was a question of fuel. Just as F1 regulates the number of teraflops teams, each car is given a maximum of 110 kilograms (29.06 gallons) of fuel. That means teams must strive to get every joule out of every drop, which changes from race to race depending on the track and conditions.
Mani Sarathy, Associate Director of KAUST’s Clean Combustion Research Center, said, “We are helping McLaren determine optimal fuel burn by providing them with candidate formulations and tools.”
Just as Parsani’s group replaced wind tunnels with simulation, Sarathy’s team uses machine learning to identify candidates for field tests.
One area that KAUST was able to contribute to outside of the laboratory was the sensors.
The advent of real-time telemetry in the 1980s changed Formula One as a flood of new data fueled the optimization of almost everything. Today’s cars are adorned with hundreds of sensors that transmit gigabytes of data about speed, airflow, engine temperature, brakes, emissions and much more. However, the weight of these sensors quickly adds up, causing teams to seek another tiny advantage by swapping them out for sensors made from ultralight materials.
As part of this effort, a team of KAUST students was dispatched to watch McLaren Racing in action at the 2019 Bahrain Grand Prix.
Altynay Kaidarova, a Ph.D. Student of electrical and computer engineering, experienced firsthand the unbelievable loads of the car, including extreme G-forces and internal temperatures of several hundred degrees Celsius.
After her return to KAUST, under the watchful eye of her supervisor Prof. Jürgen Kosel, she set about “developing customized sensors using our latest production technologies”.
Kaidarova’s preferred material was graphene – atom-thick sheets of pure carbon that are 100 times stronger (and lighter) than steel and almost as heavy and expensive to forge.
Her solution was to 3D print her and develop a process that would allow her to customize sensors developed by colleagues to measure exposure, airflow and inertia in order to survive the extreme environments that an F1- Car is exposed both inside and outside.
She said, “Our goal is to integrate graphene-enhanced wireless sensors to simultaneously capture parameters such as force, pressure and temperature from multiple points around the car.”
TECHNICAL BEHIND THE TRACK
These sensors also have applications far beyond the track. Just as McLaren Racing has outsourced McLaren Applied to leverage its research and development in other industries, the KAUST faculty is committed to making team work in the classroom and beyond.
Sarathy’s group is working with Hyundai to develop more fuel efficient engines, while Parsani’s CFD solver is used by NASA.
Kaidarova mounted graph sensors on marine animals to provide data on both behavior and an expanded set of environmental conditions relevant to the health of the marine ecosystem in the Oceanographic of Valencia, the largest complex of its kind in Europe.
But first their contributions must prove themselves on the winding streets of Jeddah – and, McLaren hopes, prove victory.
Parsani found that F1 was the ultimate melting pot for KAUST or any other engineering university.
“The students are exposed to a real industrial project in a real environment. It’s a unique opportunity to see our pen and paper research begin, develop into algorithms, and finally apply it to one of the most intricate devices mankind has ever developed, ”he added.
Nobody could ask for a better classroom than an F1 track. The final exam is Sunday.
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