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16th June 2020

Virtual Car Team Week 11: Theme of the evening - 'wear a hat with flowers' for Brain Tumour Research!

This Friday, 19th June, Brain Tumour Research are running a fundraising campaign that involves 'wearing a hat with flowers'. Therefore to show our support, we decided to spend our entire Zoom call wearing hats with, you guessed it, flowers on!!! 

hat with flowers 350

We had flowers of all shapes and sizes.....including a number that had been pinched from the garden!!!!!

Emily even had a light up flower crown. However our vote for best hat definitely went to Luke. To quote Richard ''Not going to lie Em, you've not quite got Luke's style." 

Luke Hat 350

I guess I ought to also mention how much Luke protested that the hat wasn't his and he was only borrowing it....although not quite sure how many of us believed him!!!!! :P

If you are reading this on Friday 19th June - why not have a go yourself and join the fun to support Brain Tumour Research. 

After spending a good 15 minutes laughing and not being able to take ourselves seriously sat inside with hats and flowers - we thought we'd better get cracking with the design work. 

This week, we finally had some accurate OpenFoam simulation results to have a look at. Having only just finished running moments before the call, it felt very much like a TV talent show - watching the live results as they came in!

OpenFoam results 350   

To recap - after fearing that our cockpit size was a little too small, we have designed and tested a larger nose/cockpit to see how much of an impact this would have aerodynamically. As you can see from the results, both designs were coming out relatively similar. There is turbulence occurring at different times but that's to be expected as the designs are slightly different shapes. 

Next, we decided to compare these results with Dylan's. After all, the aim is to hopefully make improvements!!

comparison graph 350

...and much to our relief, we have done just that!!! Phew. 

Satisfied with the improvements made - we returned our attention back to the current designs. Still in OpenFoam, we layered the two designs on top of one another to see more clearly the subtle differences between them. 

design comparison 350

This was an extremely useful exercise as it helped to show how in reality, despite the increase in cockpit and nose, there wasn't really any real shape change. So decision made - we can have the bigger cockpit....which instantly helps avoid the need to surgically remove any feet!!!!! 

As we are still getting a fair amount of turbulence - especially around the cockpit, Rachel's next task is to have a deeper look into what the airflow is doing around that area to hopefully gain a better understanding on what's happening and more importantly, see if there's any improvement that can be made. 

Before moving on to livery designs - we got a little distracted reminiscing about race days. Once again, poor Luke got the brunt of the jokes as Smurf reminded us of a rather hilarious clip from Rockingham Finals 2018 of Luke doing the macarena....and of course we had to pause the meeting to re-watch the footage!!!

Luke Macarena 350 

Having sufficiently entertained ourselves....and to save Luke from further embarrassment, we returned our attention back to the livery. 

Following an update on Cate's progress, we had a team 'thought shower', discussing our livery inspiration and potential colour scheme options.  

colour wheel 350

Our thoughts and ideas were noted down by Cate, who's planning to implement our ideas ready for next week. We're certainly excited to see our thoughts become a reality. 

 All car designed out, it was time for 'CAUC Lockdown Quiz Night' - hosted by Richard & Jane. In week 7, we were tested on our General Knowledge, CAUC, Flags, Greenpower Rules and finally Guess the Mr Men characters!!

Mr Messy 350

Going one step further than week 6...Mr G (who ironically named himself 'last place Mr G') finally managed to win a round....it only took having one completely on Greenpower Rules to do it!!! 

Mr G wins 350

Unfortunately however, this wasn't enough to knock Cate out of top spot - who for the third time (2nd week in a row) was CAUC quiz winner, closely followed by Cerys who sits only one point behind!

week 7 leader board 350

So all in all, another productive evening! 

Hope everyone is keeping well & we shall see you next week!