The TTZero 2012 update thread - Teams

[castrophony]

I never meet any "Ollominium" walking around in the workshop

My mistake, it is called Olimunllum and is a thermoplastic composite material with twice the Young's modulus of aluminium and around 1000kg less per cubic metre density.

We'd never heard of it either; its appearance is very much similar to black anodised aluminium and it can be plastic welded which is a useful manufacturing advantage.

Vercar have really gone all out on weight saving it would appear!

[Warren]

"The winglets on the tail section have not function for the rider's feet, they're there to produce vortices which re-energise the wake of the bike, thereby reducing drag. Effectively they replicate the effect of having a big, tapering tail section without any of the added weight or skin friction."

Keep dreaming! If two little tabs could replace an entire tail fairing, that would be huge news. If they did actual wind tunnel testing, they may have found some small drag reduction. But I assure you it would be small compared to a full tail fairing.

[Nuts & Volts]

"The winglets on the tail section have not function for the rider's feet, they're there to produce vortices which re-energise the wake of the bike, thereby reducing drag. Effectively they replicate the effect of having a big, tapering tail section without any of the added weight or skin friction."

Keep dreaming! If two little tabs could replace an entire tail fairing, that would be huge news. If they did actual wind tunnel testing, they may have found some small drag reduction. But I assure you it would be small compared to a full tail fairing.

Their is no way you can say this for sure. The field of Fluid Dynamics is vastly reliant on experimentation and date collection. Their very limited ability to do back of the napkin calculations when it comes to external flow (ie aerodynamics). A full tail has been proven to improve the aerodynamics, but the winglets could possibly offer the same or more performance gains as castrophony has stated. No equation can prove this only test data and results.

[Nuts & Volts]

Practice Results for the Finish
Michael Rutter
(1) (L1)2012 Motoczysz Elpc 102.508 (22:05.05)
John McGuinness
(3) (L1)MUGEN Shinden 96.953 (23:20.97)
Mark Miller
(2) (L1)2012 Motoczysz Elpc 94.812 (23:52.60)
George Spence
(4) (L1)Ion Horse 1 73.055 (30:59.27)
Olie Linsdell
(6) (L1)MAN TTX 2012 72.706 (31:08.18)
Rob Barber
(14) (L1)Zero Emission TGM 60.501

Mark Miller topped out at 153mph at Sulby!

It looks like 10 teams started the race and only 6 finished (or transponders failed). Lightning started the race along. It also looks like a lot of the team's slowed down in the last few miles by looking at the split times for each section.

More info here http://ttlive.iomtt.com/index.htm

[Warren]

"the winglets could possibly offer the same or more performance gains as castrophony has stated."

The auto industry has been trying to do this for 75 years. If Czysz has managed it, it would be bigger than Google. He could forget electric motorcycles. One hundred mpg cars would be here next year!

[liveforphysics]

"The winglets on the tail section have not function for the rider's feet, they're there to produce vortices which re-energise the wake of the bike, thereby reducing drag. Effectively they replicate the effect of having a big, tapering tail section without any of the added weight or skin friction."

Keep dreaming! If two little tabs could replace an entire tail fairing, that would be huge news. If they did actual wind tunnel testing, they may have found some small drag reduction. But I assure you it would be small compared to a full tail fairing.

You just need to break the vortex you're dragging. Cars are drastically more aero and larger than bikes, and would need massive impractical sized winglets.

I have no trouble believing that winglets could be reducing drag in a very real way, perhaps much better than a practical sized aero tail could do.

[castrophony]

You just need to break the vortex you're dragging. Cars are drastically more aero and larger than bikes, and would need massive impractical sized winglets.

I have no trouble believing that winglets could be reducing drag in a very real way, perhaps much better than a practical sized aero tail could do.

Maybe I should clarify/qualify my previous statement; I did not mean they REPLACE a fishtail fairing, they REPLICATE it's effect. Of course a streamliner is more efficient and the full replication of their aerodynamic function with only traditional fairings would be like striking gold. Rare, unicorn gold. However, where you are restricted in using fully enclosed or streamilne fairing such as in the TT or with production classes, using passive flow control can give remarkable benefits.
I just finished my engineering degree, and spent the last year researching this very subject; for my dissertation, I mounted the Ducati 999 rolling chassis for our TT Zero bike in our wind tunnel at uni to explore the benefit of these techniques. I was initially suspicious, especially considering that you would expect manufacturers to have exhausted all possible methods of improving the aerdodynamic performance of their bikes, however I read numerous sources which stated that apart from traditional concentration on reducing frontal area and reducing flow separation, techniques which interfere with boundary layer behaviour are lacking.
After my testing, I waded through piles of experimental data and was surprised to find that it mainly agreed with the findings of a similar study conducted in the states. That study discovered that using vortex generators could reduce overall drage by up to 8%. I can't remember the comparative figures for a streamlined bike, but a reduction of 8% equates in racing to the difference between 1st and 3rd place on anhy day.

My study used only tiny (8mm wide) vortex generators arranged in groups of five at different points on the fairing but still produced a noticable benefit. There is evidence of this in the aerodspac eindustry, where light aircraft wings can be fitted with arrangements of these devices to reduce stall speeds without compromising performance at cruising velocity.

I'm not saying that I have rewritten the rules or that I know better, but after a year working in this field I can recognise the methods being employed on the Moto Czysz bikes; they haven't wasted their time and money on the features we see here....

[liveforphysics]

I think we're on the same page then. I imagine we will see similar winglets on GP bikes very soon. :-)

[castrophony]

Wow, yesterday was such a busy day there was no time to update this thread! The thread has kind of turned from being information about the teams to being a daily update of the TT Zero bikes, so here's how yesterday went for us;
We started off by paying a visit to Harold, the German who was mistaken for the Austrian TGM entry; his feet-forward bike was still under construction and he had enquired as to whether he can enter the race. The race organiser said it would depend on the solidity of construction but it seemed unlikely. He is hoping to follow the rest of the field down Bray Hill, if only to do justice to the effort and cost of coming all the way from Germany.
His bike uses a scooter frame and a hub-centre motor of some kind, with hand-beaten aluminium bodywork. The rider's feet fit into the front wheel fairing and the whole thing looks very streamlined. Harold's ethos is to buck the trend (of current el moto building) by "looking to the past" for inspiration and thinking outside the box.





The TGM IOT bike did arrive after all, it's builder riding it into scrutineering suffering from controller issues



Here are some other shots of bikes from parc ferme;

This year's only other university entry from Brunel showed up with their Daytona 675-based twin Agni BX11 labelled with BX12 labels; we're not sure what the updates are and didn't get a chance to find out yesterday



The largely unchanged ManTTX bike:





The Japanese Komatti Mirai bike, with legendary rider Hiro Matsush1ta getting comfortable:



It would seem we are not the only team to supply our rider with some hand written guides as to where the limits lie on the dashboard info from the bike; Mirai's numerous gauges for temperature and battery SOC have been simplified into limits written on tape;



Similarly, Vercar moto's rider Gary Johnson was given instructions from the team's engineers about how to judge the bike's status

[castrophony]

Earlier in the day, we found the Kawasaki Zytek ZX-10EV propped up in the Bournemouth Kawasaki pitch. It would have been interesting to see this bike runnning with it's high-rpm motor mated to a standard ZX-10 gearbox



Finally we got a snap of our bikes without anyone spoiling the view...!




The line-up on the startline drew quite a crowd, and it was eerily quiet for the start of a race on Glencutchery Road





And even Lightning appeared after apparently rebuilding their battery pack overnight





Seeing the bikes setting off was the first chance to size up their performance; the Moto Czysz bikes took of rapidly, with only a small reduction apparent in the speed of the Mugen bike. Our rider, George Spence, seemed to launch as quickly and gained speed comparably to the Moto Czysz bikes only without the high-pitched whine of the other bikes. This lack of noise contributes to an impression of the bike being slower we reckon! The Man TTX bike seemed to be suffering transmission issues as the rider moved into position, pinned the throttle only to find the motor spinning up without engaging drive. After paddling forward a loud clunk (accompanied by a collective sound of mechanical sympathy from the crowd) saw the issue resolved the bike set off.
The rest of the field at least made it out of sight, however it soon became apparent that all was not well; Gary Johnson re-emerged from across the road after the Vercarmoto bike got as far as Glen Helen before retiring.
Waiting on the pit wall to see who came over the brown of Glancutchery road first the atmosphere was of quiet tense anticipation. Colin & I watched over the shoulders of a couple of the Czysz team at their laptop screen showing the split times as the bikes passed the various secotrs of the course.
At Ramsey, the Moto Czysz bikes and Mugen bikes in 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively were on-song for a 103mph lap, with George taking IH11 through the Sulby speed trap at 125mph to Miller's 153mph. Our predicted lap speed at Ramsey was an unbelievable 105mph, however it turned out all was not well...
A tense wait saw first Rutter (who started 2nd) come flying through the finish line at over a ton at around 22minutes, followed by McPint on the Mugen. This left the crowd wondering what happened to Miller who eventually crawled over the line with apparent problems.
After 27 minutes, the Kingston team were worried, when finally a green apparition emerged through the heat-haze down the home straight; George had run out of juice at Signpost between the 36 and 37 mile markers. This was caused by a dashboard issue which left judging the battery status to a set timeframe set out before the race (i.e. to arrive at Ramsey at XXminutes). This also accounted for the bike's incredible speed in the first part of the lap as the rider was unable to judge battery usage. A decidedly warm George paddled the bike into parc ferme and was the final bike to make it "across the line", with all other competitors breaking down on the circuit.
The attrition of Lightning and the TGM IOT can be down to the recent work undertaken on their bikes, however there was no obvious reason why the other entries did not make it round.
The inexperience of the Mugen team might suggest that Mcguinness was being conservative, however lengthy testing should mean that they are dialled-in to their bike's performance so that they don't need to pussy-foot.
The failure of the Czysz bikes' dashboards seems endemic; Rutter seems to be the more frugal rider, being able to bring the bike home to an unofficial 102mph lap whereas Miller is the gas-guzzler of the two, running out unwittingly without the support of dash-info. It remains to be seen whether Czysz can repair or replace the dashboards in time for the race, or instead follow our example from last year and duck-tape a voltmeter to the tank cover!
Our own issue left George also without a dash however the failure so early in the race (at the top of Bray Hill) meant that he had to cope for almost the entire lap without any clue to remaining capacity.
On his return, he was buzzing about the bike's performance on the mountain course. He had commented in testing at Bruntingthorpe that the front wheel would lift under power out of corners and that superbike-like shove put him on the tail of McGuinness. He stated that he was catching the Mugen all the way to Glen Helen, where the twistier road saw the probably stiffer-framed Japanese bike pulll ahead slightly. IH11's suspension was only recently set up by K-Tech and is apparently adjusted under-damped. The pattern of George reeling in McGuinness on the straights and then dropping back on the curves continued up to the Bungalow where the controller started cutting back performance in response to some cells reaching their pre-set low voltage state.

We worked after the race back at our homestay to assess the state of the pack, hooking up a vacuum cleaner to a cold-air vent to cool the roasting-hot pack! Apart from a few cells dropping quite low, everything was fine. An overnight charge saw everything return to normal which was a boon to our confidence in where the limit of the bike's performance is. The dashboard issues was also resolved easily and now the challenge will be on race day for George to balance performance and range to deliver a solid time. We are confident that we will still be locking horns with the Czysz and Mugen bikes, it will certainly be one to watch!
Which brings me to a final moan about the coverage of the event. We were paid a visit by two suits before practice from the Isle of Man development board who were asking other teams whether there was enough coverage of the TT Zero. It was obvious that the purpose of their canvassing of opinion and attendance at the grid that the powers that be are keeping a close eye on the success of this class. We have a briefing sheet and regulations from the race office at the head of which is a statement saying that they are provisional "...due to the experimental nature of the class". This indicates to us that the TT ZEro is still very much 'on probabtion' as far as the race organisers are concerned, and accounts for the lack of coverage afforded to it. for this reason, I think its really important that new teams are encouraged and not deterred by the likes of Mugen and Moto Czysz with their large budgets; without people like mad Harold the German with his feet-forward bike this event will become a two-bike race and become unattractive to the organisers!
I hope this update isn't too laborious to read, it was inspired to be this long because there only seem to be simple times and positions for the practice session on the web...

Ok for now,

Simon