EE Times' own Brian Fuller got a chance to tag along and capture some of the sights and technical essences of modern racing and bleeding-edge automotive electronics during the Indianapolis 500.
Click on the photo below to check out the action, and be sure to check back in with Design News for much more on the race.
A close-up of the front of Tony Kanaan's IndyCar. Kanann, of KV Racing, took third in the race Sunday, May 27.
[Learn more about the Indy 500 at Littelfuse's Speed2Design site.]
That's part of the reason I like to go see the races in person, to view the race cars up close, as well as the pit stop area. I've already been to the NASCAR Cup race this year at AutoClub Speedway in Fontana, California. I'll probably be going to the IndyCar season finale at the same 2-mile banked-turn oval track this September. A top level professional sports event is an all-day affair since there's so much besides the actual race.
The revolution of race car safety in the last 12 years is very impressive. That's a big part of the engineering since the cars are more than powerful enough and fast. Reliability has also greatly improved, not nearly as many mechanical failures these days.
As an engineer, I am definitely fascinated by the racing world. With NASCAR, who knew? I thought they put big motors in regular cars and raced around. WRONG! These machines are really something else, not only the engines themselves but the chassis, balance, shocks, tires, fuel, safety systems, and so on. Indy cars and Formula One are really outta this world when it comes to electronics and sensors.
I agree, Beth. If you watched the Indy 500 on ABC Sunday morning, there's a palpable thrill to ithe sights and sounds of the event, even for those of us sitting and watching from our easy chairs.
You gotta love America's obession with racing. I always find it hard to believe that NASCAR consistently ranks No. 1 in terms of viewer participation compared with other professional sports. The upside is, as this slide show well points out, there are lots of engineering takeways in tuning performance and on-the-fly design.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
A new battery design, which replaces lithium with abundant and low-cost elemental sulfur, is still in its nascent stages but shows real promise for giving batteries more energy potential.
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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