www.engineeringnews.co.nz 19
other elite racing formulae, into the road
car arena.
BAC is very focused on capturing and
using technologies to benefit their product.
The product strategy is ‘usable power’
with minimum weight, so anything that
saves weight is appropriate for Mono. It's
always possible to increase horsepower,
but weight saving is a more difficult trick.
There have been high-tech materials in
racing since the early 1980s and yet very
few have made the technology transfer
leap into series automotive production.
This kind of technology transfer is a major
focus at BAC both in terms of prototype
production and general manufacturing.
Critical attention has been paid to the
implementation of technology adoption.
With their software partners BAC has
developed programs to do financial
implication 'what ifs’ of utilising specific
are looking to use magnesium and other
materials that are outside the Formula One
rules.
Carbon fibre wheels are banned in Formula
One and yet BAC uses a carbon fibre/
aluminium hybrid wheel to save even more
weight. The BAC team, led by BAC’s
co-founder and Design Director Ian Briggs,
designed the carbon-composite wheels
in collaboration with British performance
wheel manufacturer, Dymag.
As well as revolutionising the look of the
BAC Mono, the new wheels bring weight
and performance improvements – lowering
the unsprung mass and rotational inertia of
the wheel.
BAC scooped another world first when it
became the first manufacturer to develop
a car featuring panels incorporating the
use of graphene – an innovative and
lightweight material.
In a collaboration with Haydale Composite
Solutions, BAC created grapheneenhanced
carbon fibre composite rear
wheel arches. It is significantly lighter and
stronger than standard carbon. The use
of graphene brings weight reductions of
around 20% while producing panels that
are 200 times stronger than steel.
Mono is constructed using high-strength
carbon fibre composite around a steel
safety cell. The cell is designed for
maximum safety and includes an FIAcompliant
steel rollover structure, a
sophisticated side impact structure and a
front carbon crashbox.
The chassis is an inconel tubular
spaceframe and the bodywork, which is
non-structural but has to withstand and
technology, so before anything goes into
production there is a detailed breakdown
of the costs of the component or
development.
BAC see themselves as a catalyst or
implementation accelerator in the process
of transferring high-tech racing type
technologies to the mainstream. A case
in point is their ceramic brake supplier,
Surface Transforms, based in Liverpool,
which has a unique manufacturing
process. They've been supplying
companies like Koenigsegg to a limited
extent and since they've been involved
with BAC they are now talking to other
significant niche players like McLaren and
JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) with regard to
supplying their brake discs.
The materials in Mono vary from the use of
wood in the plank much like Formula One
to prepreg carbon, inconel, stainless steel,
titanium, more recently graphene and they
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