UA Motorsports Initiative

Our Qualifications

The University’s directive to advance transportation systems has motivated massive investments in state-of-the-art automotive research and development infrastructure that attracts top faculty in automotive and related areas. Prospective students touring our campus are drawn to these resources and motivated to pursue a variety of automotive careers. A substantial fraction of these develop a passion for motorsports, which is reflected in the significant growth in our Formula and Baja SAE programs, EcoCAR and our world-leading Autonomous Indy Challenge team. This passion is clear to our faculty and administration, as well, which is why we are proud to announce The University of Alabama’s commitment to the Motorsports Initiative.

This commitment includes baseline funding for motorsports and performance aftermarket-focused graduate and undergraduate students and their advisors to create the Initiative. A partnership with our team will reduce your time and cost barriers, enabling you to collaborate with the University’s faculty and students. We have the tools to help you solve industry challenges and complete your projects, ranging from quick turn-around solutions to long-term research and development. Shareholders who partner with the Motorsports Initiative can leverage UA’s state-of-the-art resources including:

• Vehicle & engine testing and certification laboratory
• Dynamic & steady flow characterization laboratory
• Spray visualization & combustion analysis laboratories
• Material analytical characterization facility
• Rapid prototyping & foundry facilities
• Automated manufacturing laboratory

Our Facilities

The Alabama Analytical Research Facility (AARC)

The AARC is a core facility that houses among the most capable suite of X-ray, electron and ion microscopes at any university in the USA. Its mission is to facilitate collaborative, multi-disciplinary research projects requiring state-of-the-art measurements that characterize structural and chemical material properties exhibited over length scales spanning more than a million orders of magnitude – from meters down to the atomic level. The AARC is available to both on- and off-campus users and may be employed to support industrial projects pursuing product innovation and development breakthroughs. The instrumentation suite enables such pursuit by providing detailed information to uncover how and why certain materials and material configurations exhibit superior performance which can then be used to guide new materials development. These instruments can facilitate next-level failure analysis to guide new, high-performance materials designs. THE AARC has a staff of trained personnel to assist users in identifying the appropriate measurements to meet project objectives, executing the experiments and navigating data analysis processes.

The Alabama Initiative on Manufacturing Development and Education (Alabama IMaDE)

Alabama IMaDE establishes the modernization of manufacturing technology, techniques and workforce education as a new focal point at The University of Alabama. Alabama IMaDE’s mission is to address the future of industrial problems through education, research and service with a systems integration and industry mindset approach. The initiative will produce broadly educated students with a wide range of career opportunities centered on the future of manufacturing and will cultivate an American workforce to lead the global manufacturing sector through the fourth industrial revolution and beyond.

The Engines and Combustion Laboratory (ECL)

UA’s ECL is among the most capable of such facilities at any university in the United States. It consists of 11,000 square feet of high-bay space partitioned into six test cells, four instrument rooms between the test cells, two large workrooms, a central hallway and substantial storage space. Each test cell has between 16 to 32 thousand SCFM of temperature-controlled ventilation air and access to temperature and humidity-controlled combustion air. Additional infrastructure includes compressors to simulate boosted engine operation, roof-mounted evaporative heat exchanges for process cooling water, 70 SCFM compressed natural gas source, and full dilution systems for both heavy-duty engine and light-duty vehicle emission certification testing. The latter is facilitated by a two-roller EPA-certification capable (48-inch rollers) AC-powered chassis dynamometer able to measure the power output of front, rear or four-wheel-drive vehicles up to 14,000 pounds gross vehicle weight and up to 350 hp per axle. AC-powered engine dynos accommodate testing applications from low-speed heavy-duty (2500 to high-speed high-power 9000 RPM, 460 HP) and are capable of reproducing a variety of transient testing schedules, including the EPA transient cycle on heavy-duty engines up to 600 HP.

The Foundry

The Metal Casting and Solidification Research Facility, also known as the Foundry, at The University of Alabama, involves sand, die, investment and centrifugal casting of metals and alloys including gray iron, steel, aluminum, magnesium, superalloys, copper and titanium. The Foundry is equipped with three induction furnaces for melting cast iron, steel, brass, bronze and aluminum-based alloys. The capacity of these furnaces ranges from 50-pound to 200-pound.

Our Capabilities

Computational

Computational and modeling expertise on campus ranges from detailed fundamental analysis, including multi-dimensional computational fluid dynamics, complex non-linear stress analysis, and detailed chemical kinetics, to higher-level dynamic simulations facilitated by tools such as Matlab/Simulink and GT-Suite. The research portfolio of our automotive-focused faculty includes large collaborative efforts that facilitate experimental validation for both the detailed fundamental level simulations as well as our higher-level models, which builds a “trust-but-verify” culture to our simulation efforts. Students working on our AVTC programs develop extraordinary skills for control-system development and the associated software, model and hardware-in-the-loop vesting and validation.

Spray

Fuel sprays are critical to all types of engines. From port fuel-injected to direct-injected gasoline and diesel engines, the spray behavior can help or hinder the proper operation of an engine. Combustion stability, peak performance and emission certification all start with the fuel spray process leading to either spark or compression ignition and combustion process. The fuel injection and combustion characterization capabilities at UA are perfectly suited to answer fundamental and applied questions about specific injector behaviors, fuel compatibilities and customized nozzle designs.