This year's UBRacing entry, UBR 13 will feature bodywork manufactured in-house from carbon-aramid composite. The material, which used to great success for the seat/firewall on UBR 12, provides a significant weight saving over fibreglass which has been used in recent years, making the design of larger, more complex sections feasible without the bodywork being unduly heavy. The bodywork design features five separate components - left and right hand sidepods and sidepanels and a removable nose section.

This year, the design and manufacture of the bodywork for UBR 13 has been greatly aided by two of our sponsors. Aston Martin have provided the team with aesthetic and practical design advice and supplied the high density foam required for manufacture of the necessary molds. The foam and CAD designs were then taken to Survirn Engineering near Longbridge who provided use of their large-scale CNC machining facilities and skilled technicians, free of charge, for recreating the mold designs.

The large-scale CNC facilities at Survirn	Two of the bodywork bucks, post machining

The use of CNC machining has had an enormous impact on the manufacture time associated with bodywork manufacture and has allowed a more adventurous bodywork shape to be concieved. As always the team are very grateful to all our partners and sponsors and look forward to continuing the relationship with both Aston Martin and Survirn in the future.

www.survirn.co.uk

It is my pleasure to announce that this year’s chassis design has been completed and construction has commenced. We are very grateful for the continued support of both Duright Engineering and Midtherm Laser who have laser cut the chassis tubes and assembly jig respectively. The tubes arrived on Tuesday with a view to begin assembly next week.

The design was completed just before Christmas and is an evolution of previous years’ boasting a more compact design and a lower centre of gravity.

We will keep you updated on further progress and hopefully have pictures of a fully assembled chassis very soon!

In the meantime here are some pictures of the finished design and the early stages of construction.

Mark Sawczyn

The finished design

Measuring the first few bends

Tube bending in progress

The finished main roll hoop, front roll hoop and bulkhead!

Last week two crash structure samples were tested. Both samples were made from Aluminium Honeycomb and were tested by dropping a 300Kg block onto them from 2.5m above. Below is a picture of the two samples before the test.

The deceleration was measured by 2 accelerometers mounted on the block as shown below.

Below are the samples after the test. Sample A crushed uniformly (below left), Sample B did not crush uniformly and a side wall of one layer was broken from the sample as shown in the picture (below right).

The results of the test's are currently being analysed. Video's of the tests will be uploaded soon.