Cutting edge design technology is widely used in Formula 1 and NASCAR teams' facilities, which benefit from lucrative sponsorship deals. But CAD, CAM and CAE remain relative rarities in the more modest garages of smaller teams, such as those located around Indianapolis, surrounding its renowned motor speedway. However, that may not be the case for long.

Things may change because of a new class of Grand Am (Grand American Road Racing Association) racecar that's extraordinary because its entire body, including composite body surfaces, was modeled in Solid Edge software by auto racing veterans who don't usually rely on the latest design technology. What's more, the Grand Am Daytona Prototype has already emerged victorious in two races in the 2003 Rolex Sports Car Series, which includes endurance races in Florida and New York, among other locales.

"I hope our success with the Grand Am Daytona Prototype will help convince smaller teams that this technology can be useful to them, too," says Jeff Berger, director of Indianapolis-based engineering firm, Fin-el, which worked with one of the sport's leading car builders, Indiana-based FABCAR, on the project.

Racecar manufacturer FABCAR joined the project when Grand Am was still figuring out how the car should look. The organization had settled on one thing—that the new car would sport a closed cockpit "to make it look more like a regular car that fans could identify with," says Berger. For the rest of the car's features, Grand Am sought ideas from manufacturers such as FABCAR, which had recently bought Solid Edge, an EDS product lifecycle management solutions product, from Berger's company, Fin-el.

FABCAR enlisted Berger's expertise for the Grand Am project, and Berger developed several body models in Solid Edge. "It wasn't like I just sat down and whipped out a car," he recalls. "I'd spent weeks beforehand setting up the workflow. Once I had that, I could come up with variations of the car body in just a day or two." With the software's rendering capabilities, Berger generated accurate images of his designs. He then sent these mock-ups to Grand Am to share his vision with officials there and later, to the other car manufacturers involved to advance the new concept.

Once Grand Am had decided on the racecar's general appearance, FABCAR requested Fin-el to continue with the project and help realize the new concept. Both FABCAR and Fin-el engineers developed the mechanical design while Berger focused on the body. And to make sure their efforts were synchronized, all project members exchanged Solid Edge files electronically.

During this process, a major benefit of mocking up body surfaces in Solid Edge emerged. "As we were designing the car, Grand Am was still evolving the rules," says Berger, and the technology allowed them to easily adjust to the changes.

"If we'd been working with drawings, or even a traditional surfacing program, it would have been difficult to evolve the design as the rules changed. With drawings, it would have meant starting from scratch," explains Berger. "In surfacing software, it would have involved modifying each surface and reattaching it to the surrounding surfaces. With Solid Edge's parametric modeling capabilities, we could just type in a change to the underlying sketch and all affected surfaces were automatically updated."

Berger sent body models in .stl format to a rapid prototyping facility that produced a 1:18th scale prototype. He also used the models to execute computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis on certain body components to perfect their aerodynamics. Moreover, Berger brought files of the suspension and roll bar from FABCAR into a finite element analysis program to evaluate the parts' functionality before they were manufactured. And when the car was being built, Solid Edge files in the CAM program served as the basis for machining instructions.

The completed racecar has already left the competition in the dust. So far three cars have been sold, and the one purchased by Brumos Racing claimed its first win in March at the Nextel Grand Prix of Miami at Homestead-Miami Speedway—a 250-mile race that's part of the Rolex Sports Car Series. In fact, with the Brumos Racing Porsche-powered FABCAR, driver J.C. France and driving partner, Hurley Haywood, have been victorious in the last two Rolex Sports Car Series races and now sit atop the Rolex Series Performance Index ratings.

The #59 Brumos Racing car showed promise from the start, acing a 28-hour test run at the Daytona International Speedway last December. Meanwhile, the other two cars sold are also performing well; the second car clocked the fastest time in pre-race qualifying while the third is proving competitive as well and running without a glitch.

Indeed, the success of the first Solid Edge-designed racecar has not only left an impression on Grand Am Racing fans, but on racecar designers as well. Berger hopes that the project will inspire facilities around Indianapolis to emulate their Formula 1 and NASCAR counterparts and adopt top-of-the-line design technology to build better speed machines.

Sources: "Turnkey" Race Car Turns Heads in Daytona
CADinfo.NET
http://www.cadinfo.net/editorial/fin-el.htm

JC Tops Index
Grand American Road Racing Association, May 13, 2003
http://www.grand-am.com/news/news648.html