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Buckeye Bullet Exceeds 300 mph
In October, 2004, the Buckeye Bullet, Ohio State University’s
electric land speed vehicle, became the first electric car to
officially exceed 300mph, setting both the national and world
speed records. It’s not easy to set a land speed record
for an electric car, but if you pair a topnotch University, dedicated
to the advancement of automobile research, with the best technology
in the industry, you get record-breaking results. The Bullet,
designed, built and maintained by the undergraduate and graduate
students at Ohio State University established a new national
speed record with top speed of 315 mph at the Bonneville Salt
Flats in Utah, beating its own national record of 257 mph.
After designing a car that beat their own record, what more
could these engineering students want? According to Kimberley
Stevens, the aerodynamic design leader of the team, they are
working on the new Buckeye Bullet II, a next generation electric
car that will be powered by the cutting edge technology of fuel
cells rather than batteries.
In order to achieve optimal aerodynamic results, Stevens and
her team are using the most sophisticated graphics software in
the industry to design the body of the Bullet II. The select
cadre of student engineers responsible for the body design and
shape of the car are using CATIA and SolidWorks software applications.
And to get the best graphics results when running CAD software,
they turned to ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators. “We
have seen a drastic improvement in performance of our existing
software design since installing the ATI FireGL graphics cards,” stated
Stevens. “It is great to see such performance enhancements
by just changing the graphics cards that we use.” |
Advancing Car Design with Technology
The Buckeye Bullet team strives to advance the technology of
electric vehicles; proving that students can gain engineering
experience and knowledge while designing a safe electric land
speed record car. “Our car is faster than any other vehicle
like it despite being built, designed and maintained entirely
by students,” Stevens comments. While designing the new
car, the team works on minimizing the air drag of the vehicle,
maximizing stability of the car, solving unforeseen stability
issues that arise at high speeds and the deployment and maintenance
of the parachutes that stop the vehicle. These tasks are carried
out mainly through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies
and wind tunnel tests.
Stevens not only relies on the performance and reliability that
the ATI FireGL gives the modeling packages, she also runs CFD
on her designs using Altair Hypermesh, GAMBIT and TGrid for preprocessor
grid generation and FLUENT for the CFD solver. “We are
able to achieve better accuracy using the ATI FireGL card because
it lets us view and adjust our design in record speed.”
“While designing the Buckeye Bullet’s new body,” Stevens
continues, “the ATI FireGL card allows us to easily view
and modify the very large assemblies that are produced by the
software. We have come to rely on the speed and performance boost
ATI provides us when modeling in both CATIA and SolidWorks.”
Minimizing Volume, Maximizing Speed
The ATI FireGL card has enabled the Buckeye Bullet team to study
the computer generated model of the car in great depth. The record
setting Buckeye Bullet electric car is made of a carbon-fiber
composite and is 31 feet long, 30 inches wide, 24 inches high,
and weights in at 3800 pounds. It is run by a 400 hp motor with
12,000 nickel metal hydride batteries and requires 2 parachutes
for decelerating. “Using ATI’s graphics cards, we
are able to rotate large assemblies, assuring everything is packaged
in a manageable way in the car”. The student designers
are able minimize the surface area of the Bullet II, thus reducing
the skin friction drag on the car. “This ability is invaluable
because maximizing the use of the volume contained within the
body of the car is critical. Since we have so many components
of fixed dimensions, packaging is crucial to maximize volume
usage. When you have less volume and less drag, you get a much
faster car.”
Previously, without ATI’s FireGL technology, it was difficult
for Stevens and her team to perform the quality control needed
in their record setting design. Computer models ran slowly which
made it challenging to ensure everything fit where it was placed
and that the various components were interacting correctly. “I
can now ensure accurate results of my CFD studies because the
graphics performance of the ATI FireGL. It allows me to study the
quality of the grids I generate for the solver, given high quality
grid elements are essential to accurate CFD results.”
Ohio State University’s Buckeye Bullet successes have
advanced the technology of electric vehicles and have proven
to the world the viability and performance capabilities of electric
vehicles. Proper design is the first step in proving viability. “Without
being able to properly design the car, our records would have
been much more difficult to achieve.”
About Ohio State University
Ohio State University’s Center for Automotive Research
is an interdisciplinary university research center supported
by the Transportation Research Endowment Program (TREP), and
by industry and government grants and contracts
The Center for Automotive research, a department within the
College of Engineering, offers advanced experimental facilities
that include engine and vehicle dynamometers, vibrations, noise
and acoustics laboratories (including a hemianechoic room containing
a chassis dynamometer), an intelligent vehicle laboratory, engine
fluid mechanics and combustion research facilities, and electric
and hybrid-electric propulsion research facilities.
Product Information
ATI
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