Frenagem magnética: segurança e melhor desempenho automobilístico

Abstract

Motorsport has been a worldwide passion for over a century. In Brazil, it won thousands of fans and lovers after the inauguration of Gávea Circuit, comprising 12 km of innumerable very tight turns, and the cars reached 300 km/h in straights. The evolution of technology allowed the creation of different vehicles and increasingly faster tests, always seeking to combine safety and performance in a balanced way. However, accidents are a reality and even though advanced safety elements exist, the pilot's life is always at risk, such as the accident that took Ayrton Senna’s life in 1994. Turns represent the region of greatest danger in a race track, as the lateral acceleration to which the car is subjected can cause a tangential escape. This, even if it doesn't cause an accident, still represents the loss of valuable milliseconds to the pilot, because once the car skids, a part of the engine's energy is being lost in the tires. In a turn, the sum of the forces in the three planes act on the car's behavior and in cases of rain, the situation is aggravated by the lack of grip caused by water. In auto racing, every more experienced driver knows that any mistakes made in turns will be reflected in the final time of the race. This work proposes the investigation of a controlled method of increasing grip on curves to be added to vehicles, both as a way to improve their safety as to increase their performance, reducing the need for braking when entering turns. This will consist of a magnets system coupled to the vehicle and an asphalt coating with magnetic characteristics.