VI-grade, a global leader in providing simulation tools to the racing and production automotive markets, launched the VI-grade Virtual Formula to assist students in developing their designs, but also inject fun and competition using the virtual world!

The challenge:

• Optimize the performance of a virtual race car and minimize the lap time on a given autocross track.
• Competition will be won by the team able to provide back to VI-grade the vehicle with the shortest laptime on the given circuit.

The tools:
For the competition you will need the following products, which can be downloaded (documentation) for free:

• VI-CarRealTime
• VI-SuspensionGen
• VI-Road
• VI-Animator
• VI-DriverR

• Suspension curves
• Suspension set up 
• Brakes 
• Steering system 
• Gear ratios 
• Gear shifting versus engine RPM map 
• Springs 
• Dampers 
• ARB
• Differential

The prizes:

• 2 years university license of VI-CarRealTime
• Free participation at the next VI-grade User’s Conference

Deadlines

• Registration to the Virtual Formula contest - March 31st, 2009
• Submission of the vehicle model and laptime simulation back to VI-grade - May 15th, 2009

What VI-grade provides to the teams:

• Trial period software licenses of our VI-CarRealTime and other software modules for designing and simulating the vehicles
• Tutorials to learn the software and practice designing and simulating test vehicles
• A complete model of a representative Formula SAE vehicle
• Test tracks and driver events to test the car with simulations
• Technical support to student questions
• Judging of all entries with a report back to the student teams
• Contest prizes, including software prizes of our commercial software and free passes to our User Conference
• Promotion of the event through our website and newsletters

Benefits to Students:
As a result of the contest, VI-grade anticipates the following benefits to team members:

• students will develop more insight in their eventual physical vehicle design, especially full vehicle operating behavior
• students will become familiar with state-of-the-art simulation tools used in F1, NASCAR, IRL and other racing series as well as tools used in the design of high performance automobiles at companies such as Audi, BMW, Porsche, Ferrari, GM, and other leading manufacturers
• students will gain a better appreciation of the use of simulation to solve real world engineering problems, including the importance of correlation of results to physical tests and validation of all input and output data

A success story from university

VI-grade helps Squadra Corse Politecnico di Torino to be competitive in Formula SAE

The Formula SAE team Squadra Corse Politecnico di Torino from the Turin Engineering School recently selected VI-grade technology to enhance quality of their virtual models for vehicle dynamics studies.

VI-grade products give users the possibility to easily create race car vehicle models taking into account detailed suspension adjustments, aerodynamic forces and driver model settings.

Once the model has been set and validated against telemetry data, the team started to explore different combinations of parameters including weight distribution, suspension attachments and spring stiffness, damping and antiroll bar set up, in order to find the best set up in terms of acceleration and dynamic behavior on different maneuvers such as steering pad.

“Adopting VI-grade technology is a further step in our team to predict vehicle performances and to find out the best set up for a specific competition. So far we made use of virtual prototyping technologies but these tools were mainly focused on component level”, - says Prof. Andrea Tonoli Faculty Advisor of Squadra Corse Politecnico di Torino – “now we are able to see how all different subsystems interact and how they contribute to the overall behavior. The parametric models help us to identify most important parameters and keep them under control.”

During 2007 and 2008 Squadra Corse Politecnico di Torino participated in 3 different competitions: Formula Student Silverstone, Formula Student Germany at Hockenheim and Formula SAE Italy at Fiorano on the legendary Ferrari test track. On this circuit the team accomplished its best ever result with the second position at the end of the 3-days event, both in 2007 and 2008.