NASCAR’s Subsequent Gen Race Automobile Confirmed Secure by Simulation

NASCAR’s 2018 announcement that it might develop a brand new kind of race automobile, known as Subsequent Gen, which might be used as a platform by all race groups within the NASCAR Cup Sequence, predictably raised some eyebrows and triggered an outcry amongst race groups and followers of the game. With all of the issues that would doubtlessly go mistaken in designing a brand new race automobile, why take the chance? And why throw away many years of improvements created by engineers, mechanics, and drivers to optimize their automobile’s efficiency? 

However NASCAR officers had their causes. Fan attendance at racetracks was down, and the inventory vehicles that raced beneath the banner of the Nationwide Affiliation for Inventory Automobile Auto Racing (NASCAR) now bore little resemblance to the precise inventory vehicles rolling off meeting traces and into dealerships all over the world. In actual fact, although they had been touted as the newest in automotive engineering, the race vehicles had been utilizing extremely modified variations of automotive applied sciences of the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, tweaked for ever larger efficiency by engineers through the years.

John Probst, senior vp of Racing Innovation at NASCAR, sums up the problem as one among “relevance.” 

“We want a racing platform that can make us extra related to our unique gear producers (OEMs) and our followers,” Probst says. “One factor that was plaguing us was that the suspension know-how on the automobile was from the Nineteen Sixties. We hadn’t actually migrated with the tempo of the automotive business very effectively. With respect to that, our race automobile our bodies had been extra like sedans than racing coupes. And it’s no secret that the interior combustion engine has a whole lot of stress on it from electrical hybrid and totally electrical powertrains. So, we needed to grow to be extra related to our followers, our automotive OEMs, our inventory automobile heritage, and the environmental realities.” 

On the enterprise aspect of racing, the price of proudly owning a race automobile workforce was reaching outrageous ranges — within the eight figures vary — simply to begin with a modest workforce of a pair race vehicles, a driver, and a few engineers and mechanics. This was maintaining new house owners from getting into the game at a time when NASCAR was focused on increasing. The plan for Subsequent Gen was for all groups to order normal elements from the identical distributors to construct their vehicles so prices may very well be diminished and monitored, maybe opening the doorways to a brand new crop of workforce house owners. 

The Subsequent Gen venture began with a clear sheet of paper and enter from NASCAR house owners, groups, and drivers, all of whom weighed in on the entrance finish and recognized what they needed the brand new automobile to have the ability to do. How did they need it to race, and the way a lot did they need it to price? All their responses had been shared with the designers to show that sheet of paper right into a working race automobile. 

With plans to launch the Subsequent Gen race vehicles firstly of the 2020 season, NASCAR had a whole lot of engineering to do in a short while. Ansys LS-DYNA, a normal NASCAR simulation resolution, was all the time going to play some position in simulating crash checks to scale back the excessive prices (roughly $500,000 per take a look at) of working bodily crash checks. Then 2020 got here and the world stood nonetheless. Even the crash take a look at services that NASCAR had historically used closed their doorways due to the COVID-19 pandemic. LS-DYNA was wanted greater than ever. 

Security First

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“Security is our number-one precedence at NASCAR,” Probst says. “Once we really feel like there’s a security situation, we repair the difficulty after which go discover the funds to pay for it. I gained’t say cash is not any object, however we assault questions of safety very severely with no matter assets we have to get to the right end result.”

Guaranteeing the security of the Subsequent Gen race automobile fell to John Patalak, Managing Director, Security Engineering at NASCAR. Patalak grew to become a convert to LS-DYNA simulation whereas engaged on a venture with a serious car producer to enhance the crash security of NASCAR drivers. LS-DYNA simulates the response of supplies to brief intervals of extreme loading.

The primary time I used to be actually very impressed with LS-DYNA simulation work was in 2011,” Patalak says. The venture included a simulated human physique mannequin to check the restraint system within the car, together with the seats, the shoulder helps, and the rib helps across the torso of the driving force. “Frankly, I used to be blown away by the extent of element that you can get utilizing LS-DYNA and the human physique mannequin — information that crash take a look at dummies merely simply don’t present.” 

Whereas working for NASCAR, Patalak attended graduate faculty on the Wake Forest College Middle for Damage Biomechanics, the place LS-DYNA was the usual simulation software program for research of excessive impression on the human physique. He quickly grew to become a champion of LS-DYNA at NASCAR. 

His experience and confidence in LS-DYNA had been essential to creating progress on the Subsequent Gen automobile whereas crash take a look at labs had been closed in the course of the pandemic. For the primary time, the majority of the crash testing could be dealt with by simulation.

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Placing LS-DYNA to the Check

“From the primary prototype automobile degree, we dedicated to meshing out and constructing a full LS-DYNA automobile mannequin,” Patalak says. “That instantly allowed us to begin assessing the automobile in all of the totally different crash modes that our race vehicles encounter: frontals, roof crashes, lateral aspect impacts, rear impacts, and indirect impacts. We then targeted our efforts on specific areas the place we needed to alter efficiency or the place we noticed alternatives to make issues higher.”

As a result of designs change quickly within the prototype stage, LS-DYNA was significantly useful in enabling engineers to make a change and instantly assess it in many alternative crash modes.

For instance, the workforce was making an attempt to get extra deformation out of the entrance clip (the entrance part of a automobile’s body, which is designed to crush when it hits one other automobile or a wall) at totally different factors because the venture progressed, however additionally they needed to make sure that the modifications weren’t unknowingly introducing unfavorable penalties for different crash modes, equivalent to a T-bone.

“With LS-DYNA, we’re in a position to run all crash eventualities and assess the results of a design change,” Patalak says. “Was it holistically a optimistic change or a unfavorable change, or what had been we lacking? These are issues that you just simply don’t have the assets to do utilizing bodily testing. With the ability to quantify these results with simulations actually improved the extent of confidence we had within the total design of this new car.”

Throughout the design course of, Elemance, an engineering firm devoted to human-centered design utilizing the digital human physique mannequin developed by the International Human Physique Fashions Consortium (GHBMC), carried out checks for NASCAR utilizing Ansys LS-OPT, a design optimization and probabilistic evaluation package deal. LS-OPT makes use of an inverse means of first specifying the efficiency standards after which computing the perfect design in response to a formulation.

Hundreds of bumper simulations had been run utilizing LS-OPT, and shortly NASCAR grew to become so happy with the outcomes that they dedicated to having these elements constructed with none bodily crash take a look at information. 

“These weren’t prototype elements however pre-production elements,” Patalak says. “Once we lastly had an opportunity to bodily crash take a look at them in a while, the validation and correlation between the bodily take a look at and the simulation mannequin was uncanny.”

Getting Subsequent Gen to the Beginning Line

Over the course of the Subsequent Gen design venture, NASCAR and Elemance ran greater than 5,000 Ansys simulations to make sure the brand new automobile could be protected in any crash situation. They began with a third-party cloud resolution early within the course of, then switched to Ansys Cloud, run on Microsoft Azure in mid-2021 to realize the advantages of getting a single supply for his or her simulation software program wants. They recognized the HC-series Digital Machine, which options 44 Intel Xeon Platinum 8168 processor cores, as the perfect {hardware} configuration each by way of efficiency and value.

One of many largest benefits of utilizing a single software program provider for simulations, in response to Patalak, is that you’ve got just one firm to name to resolve any issues that come up. There isn’t any different firm responsible.

“The very nice factor about working jobs on Ansys Cloud was that it was all in-house,” he says.

“I had only a few points, however simply getting something up and working on a brand new platform, it takes a while to study the settings and which clusters to ship jobs to, the reminiscence settings, and so on. It was good as a result of it was by no means another person’s fault. The turnaround time and the help from the Ansys Buyer Excellence (ACE) workforce was nice — it was a one-stop store for troubleshooting and solutions.”

After greater than 5,000 crash take a look at simulations, it took solely two bodily crash checks to confirm and validate that the design was protected and the outcomes of the LS-DYNA simulations had been correct. 

“From an engineering standpoint, our confidence in Ansys simulation is excessive. The outcomes of a bodily crash take a look at usually are not a shock to us anymore,” Patalak says.

Gents, Begin Your Engines!

However would the Subsequent Gen automobile be prepared for the primary demonstration race on the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, a stadium transformed right into a one-quarter-mile short-track racing venue, on Feb. 6, 2022? Regardless of the skeptics and the ups and downs of the design course of, it was — a lot to Probst’s reduction. 

“If we didn’t have Ansys LS-DYNA, I’m undecided the Subsequent Gen automobile would have been prepared for the 2022 season due to all the pieces being so disrupted by the pandemic,” Probst says. 

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In the long run, the coliseum race was profitable, and was a correct lead-in to probably the most anticipated occasion within the NASCAR season:  the Daytona 500, which kicks off each NASCAR Cup Sequence. Held Feb. 20, it resulted in 23 crash studies from the 40 vehicles within the race, with no vital accidents to the drivers. The Auto Membership Speedway 400, held in Fontana, California, on Feb. 27, was equally profitable.

“We had been completely satisfied leaving Daytona with the information that what we anticipated to see from our modeling work was enjoying out on the racetrack,” Patalak says. “At Fontana, we had extra and several types of crashes and, once more, good outcomes. The outcomes are matching very intently with our expectations that had been formed by way of LS-DYNA, which is exhibiting itself to be true on the racetrack in actual crashes.”

Probst agrees.

“From a better degree, I might say that we really feel like we’re off to an exceptional begin with respect to all of the targets across the Subsequent Gen venture,” he says. “There’s nonetheless a whole lot of work to do. We’re happy however by no means happy on our finish. However once you take a look at a few of our fan metrics, once you ask any person one thing so simple as ‘Was {that a} good race?,’ these numbers are literally off the charts proper now, which we predict bodes very well for this automobile.”  

For extra info please contact Ansys at https://www.ansys.com/contact-us.