20th June 2008, 20:30
| #16 |
| Team-BHP Support   | innovations It's just a prototype - in all probablities, a one-off by an enthusiastic chap. Don't expect to see rolling wooden chariots fly by on city streets just yet. I like thiekind of invention - brings out the limitless creative potential in the human race. Why not?  |
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31st July 2008, 15:52
| #17 |
| Senior - BHPian  Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Singapore, Mumbai, Nagpur
Posts: 2,166
Thanked: 219 Times
| Wooden 700 bhp supercar Well let's not pooh-pooh wood, as a supercar building material, friends! No. Not just yet! In Durham, NC, USA, post-grad students at North Carolina State Univ. have designed and built a wooden sports car as part of their post-grad project. The car is named Splinter.  It's powered by a twin supercharged, 4.6 litre V8 that can put out 700 bhp. The engine is mated to a C5 Corvette transaxle driving the rear wheels. The woodie has a top speed of 380+ km/h.  Making the car of wood posed design challenges, to get rid of engine heat, the cylinder head heat flow was reversed and the hot exhaust pipes had to be routed above the engine instead of below. The exhaust silencer is shaped like a spoiler and serves as such. Being in the slipstream helps dissipate the heat too.  Why wood? Wood has a higher strength-to-weight ratio than aluminium or steel and is easier to work on and shape. The technologists wanted to show the world that
The chassis is of made laminated wood veneer. If a bow (as in bow and arrow) could be of springy wood, so could the car's suspension. the suspension has laminated wooden arms and springs are made of Kentucky osage orange (hedge-apple) wood.  Even the wheel rims are wooden in a major way. They're 3-piece wheels with forged rims bolted to laminated oak veneer spokes and center section.  An internal roll cage protects the occupants. They sit with their legs between the upper and lower A arms.  Has wood been used for high tech vehicles before? Haven't we heard of the 1940-56 de Havilland Mosquito, a late second world war fighter-bomber made of moulded plywood? It was indeed made of laminate of Canadian Birchwood and Ecuadorean balsa.  The moulds were made of concrete. Two halves of the fuselage were separately moulded and glued together with casein glue. I have seen the moulds in the Deutsches Museum Oberschleiβheim, Munich.  And it was not as if the British ran out of aluminum in WW2 -- they had enough. The designers found that wood beat aluminum as a construction material on some counts. The Mosquito was powered by two Rolls-Royce Merlin 1,710 bhp V12 engines and outperformed every other metal fighter in the sky. It was so fast that nothing in the sky could catch it. And could carry twice the designed bomb payload. Could peak out at 680 km/h. The RAF affectionately called it names like "The Wooden Wonder" and "The Timber Terror". What more can be said in favor of the age-old wonder material, wood? And we thought its use, was limited to dashboards and door-mouldings for British sports cars and luxury cars. Ram Ref: Joe Harmon Design-Building The Splinter Wooden Supercar |
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31st July 2008, 18:20
| #18 |
| Distinguished - BHPian   | |
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31st July 2008, 19:09
| #19 | |
| Senior - BHPian Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Singapore, Mumbai, Nagpur
Posts: 2,166
Thanked: 219 Times
| What of vehicle skins that don't buckle and crumple? Quote:
There are many high-tech materials used to construct cars, aircraft and watercraft that may not buckle and crumple like sheet steel and aluminum.
Ram | |
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1st August 2008, 16:48
| #20 |
| Team-BHP Support  | |
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2nd August 2008, 11:13
| #21 |
| Senior - BHPian Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Singapore, Mumbai, Nagpur
Posts: 2,166
Thanked: 219 Times
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