Leading Motorsport Team Leverages IoT for Efficient Racecar Design

Team Penske is a renowned name in American motorsports, racing and winning in the U.S. since 1958. After 45 years of racing, with 115 Indy car wins, including a record 12 Indy 500 victories, Team Penske embarked on a new and exciting challenge of entering the Indy Racing League (IRL) on a full-time basis. This meant competing with different equipment on 15 different tracks. The design team, led by Technical Director Nigel Beresford, is an eight-strong team that combines a healthy mix of recent graduates and experienced racecar designers. The team operates under a new set of stringent rules that govern the construction of cars competing in the IRL.

Team Penske, a leading name in American motorsports, faced a significant challenge when they decided to enter the Indy Racing League (IRL) on a full-time basis. The IRL has stringent rules that govern the construction of cars competing in the league. The design team, led by Technical Director Nigel Beresford, had to work within very tight body-design criteria and were limited in what they could change. Major alterations were impossible as competing cars had to use chassis from one of three manufacturers and the same gearbox. Adding to the complexity was the time factor. There was only a five-month window between seasons, and the car had to arrive at the first race tested and ready to win. The design changes were also very restricted during the off-season, and the cars had to be ready by January for testing. The team had no time for back-up plans or mistakes and had to get the design right the first time to give the team optimum performance.

To overcome these challenges, the design team used Pro/ENGINEER as their primary design program running on HP C3700 hardware with ANSYS finite element analysis (FEA) for testing design changes. ANSYS significantly shortened time-to-market by allowing engineers to utilize basic analysis capabilities during the design phase of product or part development. The program provided designers with access to the same underlying analysis techniques that would be deployed later for detailed product certification, enabling them to make early, intelligent decisions about design, materials, and manufacturing. Using ANSYS, the racecar was broken down into many small simple blocks known as elements. The behavior of each individual element was described with a relatively simple set of equations. The software was then used to solve this large set of simultaneous equations. From this solution, FEA software could extract the behavior of the individual elements. This method was the only proven way to deal with complex boundaries and provided efficient solutions to “real world” physics-based problems.

• The use of ANSYS for composite analysis and finite element analysis (FEA) allowed Team Penske to make early, intelligent decisions about design, materials, and manufacturing. This not only helped them meet the stringent criteria and tight deadlines of the Indy Racing League but also improved the overall performance of their racecars. The software enabled the team to break down the racecar into many small simple blocks known as elements and analyze the behavior of each individual element. This method proved to be the only efficient way to deal with complex boundaries and provide solutions to “real world” physics-based problems. The use of precise equations helped to minimize the weight of the design, and the expected loads were assigned to the design on a computer, reducing the number of prototypes that needed to be built. This technological solution significantly improved the team's operational efficiency and competitiveness in the racing league.

• Able to stiffen an upright by 25 percent without increasing weight
• Significantly shortened time-to-market by allowing early design decisions
• Reduced the number of prototypes that need to be built due to precise equations