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Crash.net has discovered over recent weeks, going along to testing sessions with the British winter weather is not a pleasant experience, and can only be more frustrating for teams who spend money to go on track only to have the conditions restrict the amount of testing that can be carried out.
One solution to this problem could be the Seven-Post test rig located at the Lola Cars factory in Huntingdon which allows people to increase the development speed of a car or to work on a vehicles set-up, all without the need to actually go out on track.
An added bonus is that the software used with the rig allows engineers to enter the data from a circuit into computers so that the rig can simulate a circuit, allowing teams to find the optimum set-up for a venue that they may never have even seen before.
“What we try and do is simulate any track anywhere in the world within the controlled testing environment of the factory,” R&D engineer Andrew Murdock explained. “It enables us to replay tracks time and time again. Our two main aims are to increase the grip of the car, which we call the contact patch load, and also reduce the body velocity of the car.
“What we need from the team is some data from the car and also data traces of velocity. We would then connect the car to rig and iterate the car to the rig and the rig to the car to replicate the track. From that we would then run through damper and spring settings to get the best set-up for the car for that particular track.”
The system used on the rig can be quite time consuming but as Murdock explained it does have some advantages over trying to test a car on track.
