Scope Rider drives TT electric superbike success
The Scope Rider was used for the development of the electric Superbike which took second place in the SES TT Zero race at the Isle of Man TT this summer. The University of Nottingham achieved its highest ever placing at the event, splitting the two factory bikes from Mugen that have so far dominated the events. The scope was used in the lab, on the rolling road dyno, test track and on the track at the Isle of Man TT during practice and race weeks. The team managed to improve on their previous position of third in 2017 and shaved 1.45 minutes off last year’s lap time and improving their average lap time from 109mph to 119mph.
The Isle of Man TT Zero race is an electric motorsport event which was introduced in 2010. It involves one lap (37.733 miles)of the Snaefell Mountain Course whereby the motorcycles have to be powered without the use of carbon based fuels and have zero toxic/noxious emissions.
The Nottingham electric superbike has undergone considerable modification in the last 12 months, including a new powertrain with a different converter and a modified motor. Rohde & Schwarz provided a R&S Scope Rider oscilloscope to the University of Nottingham team to be used for fault finding and communications management. “We found the R&S Scope Rider invaluable for our testing. Because it’s battery driven and easily portable, it’s unlike any other scope we’ve used in the past. It also has a wide range of user-friendly functionality,” said Dr Miquel Gimeno-Fabra, Assistant Professor in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering and University of Nottingham Racing General Manager.
The scope has been designed to provide lab-level measurements in the field with an acquisition rate of 50,000 waveforms per second, a custom 10 bit A/D converter, isolated floating channels and a maximum bandwidth of 500 MHz for the analogue input channels. It is based on a high performance oscilloscope featuring a precise digital trigger system, 33 automatic measurement functions, mask test and XY diagram mode. In addition, it integrates seven further instrument functions: a logic analyzer with eight additional digital channels, a protocol analyzer with trigger and decoding capability, a data logger, spectrum and harmonics analysis, frequency counter and a digital multimeter. An easy to use interface, combining a tablet-like touchscreen, large buttons and a practical multifunction wheel for convenient parameter adjustment, makes all the functions and settings easily accessible, even with gloved hands.
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