Motostudent

MotoStudent is a 1.5 year long competition is distributed to different phases, from the conceptual design, through manufacturing and documentation, climaxing into the final race event on an official MotoGP race track, Motorland Aragón, in Spain. Each team shall develop a completely new electric or petrol motorcycle in every series of the competition, and then stand ground in static and dynamic tasks. Moreover, beside technical plans, they have to execute an innovation, and a business plan, and present them in front of a professional jury. One of the most challenging yet exciting time of my life so far, when I was a member of my university's MotoStudent team called Kenji Racing Team (fka. KEFO MotoStudent).The team included the following active members: Attila Tímári, Pál Novák, Tamás Nagy, István Hatos, Filipa Joao-De Olivera, Dávid Tímári, Mihály Nagy, Róbert Kürtösi, Anita Solymosi, Dávid Horváth, and me.

Background

Freshly founded, without any prior experience or know-how, we had to obtain human, financial and material resources, then design and engineer a racing motorcycle to compete against universities from all over the world, whose roots are deep in the motorcycle racing culture.In our first series, my main contribution towards the team was represented in the realisation of our innovation. Firstly in the motorcycle racing, we used aluminum foam-carbon fibre composite sandwich structure for the frame and swingarm of our motorbike. And not just the material selection was unique. The structures comprised neither bolted nor welded connections, they were bonded with adhesives. These innovations caused us 3rd place on the MotoStudent’s Innovation category, and 1st place on the Henkel Adhesive Technology Innovation competition, as a rookie team. My role was to carry out the material technology, through research, conceptualization, design, and manufacturing, in close cooperation with the structural designers, in order to ensure the motorbike's dynamic performance.

Research

We had to find out the barriers of our material selection, so we experimented with different foam densities. We executed tensile and bending tests, and investigeted various bonding surface forms for the adhesives.

Concept & Design

We mapped the motorcycle's different subsystems, then identified correlations between them, and the key performance indicators we want to reach, with respect of the technical regulations. We had to define the basic geometry of the frame and swingarm, then optimize the number of carbon fibre layers, the fibre orientation of the layers, in order to maximize the dynamic performance. These optimizations were crucial, because of the varying dynamic loading conditions, and the desired torsional flexibility to reach.

MAnufacturing

Based on our designs, we got our hands dirty, and dove deep into hours of work. The aluminium foam blocks had been cut with water jet, then bonded with adhesives. When the structure was ready, we could laminate the carbon fibre sheets. There is something magical, when your design comes to life, especially when it is by your own hands.

ready to race

At the final phase of the competition, the vehicle had to go under a deep technical scrutiny by the organizers, to ensure the safety of all the riders. After the official approvals, our bike was ready to race.

Next season

Actively working through our first season, I could start the second as one of the 3 main decision makers, and as the leader of the "Composites" group. I deeply appreciated this possibility, since I was able to experience a lot in human thinking, by coordinating teammates, and by managing competencies. In a coordinative role, I participated in the design process of the motorcycle's fairing, which can be seen on this render (made by Dóra Halkó). This design was also realized, sometime after I left the team due to my graduation.