Last Sunday the
Indian Grand Prix took place at the Buddh International Circuit in Greater
Noida (near Delhi). 12 teams with 2 cars each landed in Delhi to bring to us
what can arguably be described as the most evolved species of automobiles on
the planet. Taming a Formula 1 car is no easy task for its driver. It can
accelerate from 0 to 100 km in under 2 seconds. At sharp corners the driver can
experience lateral forces of up to 5 times the force of gravity. The
temperature in the cockpit of the car often exceeds 80 degrees Celsius. This
means an F1 driver can lose up to 8 kg of body weight by the end of a 2 hour
race. He has to change gears nearly 5000 times during a race weekend. And of
course, he is expected to overtake his competitors, even at speeds of 340
km/hr. Equally challenging is the pit crew’s job. They’re expected to change
the car’s tyres (which operate optimally at a 1000 degrees Celsius) in less
than 3 seconds. A few years ago they would use fuel pumps which would inject
fuel into car at the rate of 12 litres per second. This is hard and dangerous
in equal parts, because the speed in the pit lane is ‘limited’ to 80 (sometimes
100) km/hr. imagine working a job where cars the size of lorries approach you
at 80 km/hr, and then brake hard to stop just inches away from you!
While Formula 1
is known to be a fast, dangerous and expensive sport (the average lifetime cost
of a F1 car is £4.76
million – about Rs. 41 crores), its contribution to the world of technology is
grossly underrated. In this blog-post we’ll try and explain how the technology
used in Formula 1 cars is being used in ways most of us wouldn’t think was
possible.
Innovations in
the sport of F1 have always been employed to benefit road cars. Perhaps the
clearest example is the disc brake, pioneered by Jaguar in 1953. The carbon
fibre developed to make F1 cars light (they currently weigh about 550 kg) is
used to make racing bikes, some of which were used in this year’s London
Olympics. Semi-automatic gearboxes were first introduced by Ferrari, who used
them in their F1 cars in the 1989 season. The Kinetic Energy Recovery System
(KERS) currently used in F1 cars uses the heat energy produced when the brakes
are applied and stores in the form of electric energy. This is later used to give
the cars an extra boost of energy. This makes cars both fuel-efficient and
environment-friendly.
All these
innovations, however, are only limited to the world of automobile technology.
Technical innovations in the sport have also been used in, among others, fields
like healthcare.
Recently, in the
UK, an infant with a heart condition needed to get to a particular hospital in
less than 4 hours. A helicopter was available, but the infant had to be kept in
an incubator. Traditional incubators were too heavy for a helicopter. A special
‘baby-pod’, weighing just 9 kg (a normal incubator weighs 120 kg) was used. The
material, ventilator, shock absorbers and heating pad of the pod were directly
derived from F1 technology. These pods, currently only 20 in number, have saved
hundreds of lives in the last few months.
Another new
cutting-edge technology is the McLaren Team’s advanced
telemetry system, which uses sensors to monitor data feeds and thus enable
real-time strategy and decision making. This technology is now being used to
monitor people instead of cars. It has already been
used to train UK athletes in a number of Olympic disciplines - for instance, in
canoeing.
McLaren's miniature sensors go inside the paddle, so every time an
athlete applies force on the water, the sensor measures it and transmits the
data back to see how fast the boat is going. This
instant feedback helps athletes make more informed decisions about when to rest
and how to change techniques, thus accelerating their rate of development - and
increasing their chances of success in competitions. Similarly, patients
suffering from a medical condition can attach medical sensors to themselves,
which will in turn transmit data to their doctors.
F1 showcases the power of human imagination. It
involves cars with over 80,000 individual parts, tyres that optimally operate
at 1200 degrees Celsius, drivers who have to put up with acceleration forces
five times that of gravity and aerodynamic designs that prevent the cars from
being air-borne at high speeds. But the wide application of its technology to
fields like healthcare and human resources also makes it feel like a peak into
the future.
Inspired by all this F1 excitement, we are excited to announce a new competition this year, the Techkriti Grand Prix, where you get a chance to fabricate a miniature, remote controlled vehicle, powered by an Internal Combustion (IC) Engine, that mimics a real life car. For more details, visit - www.techkriti.org
