9th June 2020
Virtual Car Team Week 12: Return of the Greenpower Quiz and our usual antics on Solid Edge and OpenFoam!!
With Part 2 of the Greenpower Quiz scheduled for tonight, we couldn't not get involved! Therefore, in preparation, we kick started the evening with a team meeting to discuss tactics!!! After a rather chaotic 45 minutes last time, all shouting answers at once, we wondered whether to split the team in two and have a mini competition between each other. However, as Karoot rightly pointed out "Well, we are Complete and Utter Chaos after all" - so keeping true to our name, we decided to stick as one!!
Determined to improve upon our 18th place, while waiting for the quiz to start, we participated in a quick group Greenpower Revision session!!!!!
Was this all a little too late - who knows?! But with the quiz about to start it was time for Becksy to screen share the live stream, and Jane to log onto Kahoot as keypad representative for team 'Chaos!'
We didn't start off too well - not even making it into the top 6!
....But then suddenly our fortunes began to change. After dancing around in 1st, 2nd & 3rd, by question 11 we managed to get ourselves into 1st place. The excitement was unreal...especially considering Becksy's live stream was lagging and we were having to refresh after every question to try and get ourselves back in sinc with Jane and Erin's devices!!.
Much to our surprise, as each question went by, somehow, we were able to maintain our lead. Maybe our little revision session paid off?!
Heading in to the last question, there was only 72 points separating ourselves from CR in 2nd. Everything was resting on the last question, it all boiled down to our knowledge on....'How many Greenpower office dogs are there?!!!!'
Answer submitted, we sat patiently waiting for the answer to be revealed.
......We got it right! Woho. But the question was - did CR also get it right and indeed answered quicker than us?
Only time would tell.....
...And there you have it, reminiscent of the 2012 National Finals at Goodwood, we lost our lead on the 'last corner', leaving us in 2nd place!
Who'd have thought a quiz would have become that tense!!!! :P Our thanks again to Gav, Ben and Co for their efforts in putting it together. We had great fun and are already looking forward to the next one!
Having sufficiently celebrated our 2nd place, we turned our attention back to designing cars.
Starting with OpenFoam to see the simulation results from the two cockpit sizes (as mentioned in our previous posts!)
When comparing the designs, both lines had a period of turbulence that we weren't expecting to see. Therefore, in order to investigate further, Rachel (our resident OpenFoam expert**) brought up the simulation at the time of turbulence so we could have a closer look and investigate what the problem was.
**We aren't joking when we say she's an expert! Having worked hard alongside Richard, Rachel has since started to take more of the lead....even beginning to correct typos and, like tonight, correct Richard on his mistake (although probably also worth mentioning that these mistakes don't happen very often!!)
Still on the quest to understand the turbulence, Rachel and Richard showed us some Residual Graphs, looking at continuity and error. We were finding it weird that each line on the graph started the same, both experienced turbulence but at different times, before ending the same. The way both jumped, it suggests that they were unstable and thus seems more like a software error rather than design.....or at least we hope that's the case!!
In order to clarify this, new cases will be set ready for Rachel to re-run and see whether it's more stable. So watch this space....hopefully next week we'll have the results to hand.
Next, we went onto Solid Edge to continue working on the Steering Geometry. Following last week's discussions and ideas for the steering mechanism - these have since been drawn up and added into the car for us all to see.
Whilst looking at the steering geometry, we may or may not have got a little distracted by Barney who came to join the call...and pinch the leftovers of Em's dinner!!!!!
Once car chats were over, for the remainder of the evening, we had ourselves a little catch up; seeing how everyone's been over the last week and looking at Lucy's GCSE Product Design Coursework that she'd just picked up from school.
We were also shown Lil's latest additions. Meet Ovi, Dougie and Flur, her new pet ducklings!
That's all from us this week. Hope everyone is keeping safe and well. See you next time!