A sporting chance

In the end, the South African double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius didn't compete in the Beijing Olympics. He failed to meet the 400m qualifying standard by about three tenths of a second, but not before the man they call Blade Runner won a legal fight brought on by those who feared he had an unfair advantage over able-bodied athletes. Note that weOre talking Olympics here, not Paralympics. OscarOs detractors had been worried about the elongated stride length facilitated by his £15,000-a-pair artificial Cheetah limbs – lightweight carbon blades inspired by the shape of cheetahs' back legs. They work by springing back into shape and restoring most of the energy expended in sprinting, although they can be prone to flapping about a bit in the wind and need more effort to get going at the start. They're made by Icelandic prosthetics specialists Ossur and provide a perfect example of the role that cutting edge engineering can play in modern sport. Sportsmen and women specialising in diverse disciplines from clay pigeon shooting to motor racing and bobsleding to biking are looking to the best of leading high tech manufacturing to put them on the podium. With Olympic triple gold medallist, BBC sports personality of the year and newly knighted Sir Chris Hoy elevating cycling to the pinnacle of the current sports popularity poll, John Bailey's decision to cut out a slice of biking action for his company is beginning to look inspired. Bailey (pictured) is managing director of BERU f1systems, a very high end, high tech manufacturer quietly getting on with its business in the shadows way out of reach of the spotlight that shines on its would-be competitors in Northampton and Oxford's famous Formula One engineering hubs. From its headquarters on a small industrial estate on the outskirts of a modest market town on the Norfolk-Suffolk border, BERU f1systems exerts a major influence not only upon how quickly and safely race cars lap the track but on how quickly, safely and environmentally responsibly you and I will, in future, fly the world. Bailey avoids identifying a Ocore business', preferring to emphasise his companyOs diversity and its opportunistic, technology- and materials-led transition into activities that have synergy with its skills and experience. That all comes together in a project for which his passion is, quite literally, palpable. A bike thatOs like no bike you'll ever have seen until its exclusive unveiling to Works Management now. BERU f1systems makes wiring harnesses. A bit boring? That's until you find out they involve embedding and curing the wiring complete with terminating connectors into composite material. One allowed Jaguar to drive its prototype CXF concept car onto its stand at the Detroit Motor Show. More importantly, the composite materials technology involved got BERU f1systems deeply embroiled in aerospace projects that, for now, must remain secret but in a few years will bring significant benefits to the company, the industry and to flying itself. It also knows a lot about force measurement on suspensions and torque measurement on drive shafts. And courtesy of BERU AG, the German company that bought it out in 2001, BERU f1systems manufactures tyre pressure monitoring systems but not, like its parent, for volume market OEMs. It took the German software and hardware and re-engineered it – for Alfa Romeo, Bugatti, Ferrari, Lamborghini and Masserati. "We make a lot of discoveries for them," says Bailey of his companyOs contribution to its owners. But that didn't stop him having to fight for the life of his pet project. The Factor 001 cycle. To get what he sees as the ideal showcase for the company's composite and electronics design expertise – and an opportunity to break into the lucrative high end cycle market – off the ground, he had to face the mirth of some of his German colleagues and make them a promise. That it wouldn't disrupt the mainstream business or have an adverse affect on the bottom line. "We're a business that services the high end – the best of the best of wheeled vehicles – and while I'd love to be able to produce a motor car or a motorbike, we're never going to be equipped or resourced to do that," says Bailey. "But we are equipped and resourced to do a bicycle and no-one's really bothered or had the inclination to apply the technology that's available with no holds barred onto a bicycle. I donOt know why, because it would seem the logical and obvious thing to do given the size of the bike market and what can be done." A year and a half later, with a handful of highly skilled engineers having deployed only 20% or so of their time to it, Factor 001 is just weeks away from its planned official launch in March. Having thrown the UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) rulebook out of the window, a bike has been designed and manufactured employing completely different concepts to the essentially similar designs that come from specialists at £12,000 a time or from Halfords at £200. The initial aim is to start making one a week from mid year, and sell them at £15,000 to "people with too much money who just want one – and they are still out there", to professional cyclists, and premier league footballers – as a training aid, as a toy and as a 'look what I've got'. Lewis Hamilton is destined to be presented with the first one to show off in the pit lane. What makes Factor 001 so special? To manufacture the bike is a very complex operation, it's monocoque – the frame's a single piece but it's got twin tubes for the seat/down tube and the geometry is fully adjustable. "Anyone who knows about composites manufacture will know that's quite a feat, quite a challenge," Bailey says. The twin tubes use less material but give a lot more lateral stiffness. When serious cyclists are cranking up, a huge amount of force is created across a bike; conventionally, the whole frame distorts and that distortion is transferred to the wheels. The stiffer the frame can be, the better. Normally that means adding a lot of material, a lot of weight, but not on this baby which weighs in at a featherlight 7kg. The wheels are also of rare monocoque construction (most composite bike wheels are made from a rim with spokes that are fitted afterwards). They are stiff, light and significantly narrower than standard because the designers wanted to deploy a ceramic disc braking system – unique for a road bike. It provides a very predictable surface to brake on, irrespective of environmental conditions; hot, cold, wet or dry, they'll behave in exactly the same way. "At the moment, they're immensely powerful; you could say nut-crunchingly so," says Bailey to wincing intakes of breath all round. "We'll have to do a little fine tuning there. In races like the Tour de France where the cyclists are often riding down steep declines, constantly braking hard and braking again for, say, hairpins, conventional brakes fade and stop working properly. With this, you can go downhill all day long – so long as youOve got pad material available, you'll be fine." Not that you would be allowed to ride Factor 001 in the Tour. Restrictive regulations currently mean it could only be used in time trials and triathlon – something that should be changed, suggests Bailey, given the safety advantages of brakes that he says are '50 times better' than their conventional counterparts. As with other aspects of the design, these advanced principles could be adopted more widely – but only if those who want to adopt them ask BERU first. Naturally, it has the patent design registered globally. For all its innovative features, a standalone Factor 001 bike won't necessarily give its riders a significant competitive advantage. But the application of BERU f1systems' measurement expertise, when the bike and its rider are fully instrumented with an electronics package to Formula One standards, will. It might put the price up to £20,000 but the data collection, logging and analysis capability that has so far been demonstrated to the cycling world has "blown them away," Bailey says. While it won't be ready for the March launch – Bailey wants to get the bike to market as quickly as possible and his team are currently busy writing and re-writing the electronics package to accommodate what the professional cycling world is telling them are the important criteria as far as data is concerned – a standalone aftermarket package could provide a bigger revenue stream than anything else the company does. Biometric data from the rider, physical force data from the bike and environmental data – all linked and all vital in the way each effects the other – will be gathered wirelessly, and correlated for analysis by team trainers and scientists. They will know how hard and how fast the rider is breathing, about chest expansion, and have full cardiographic measurement of the kind that that paramedics use for heart attack diagnosis and communication between a patient and the hospital. From the bike, they will find out – via a plethora of mathematical channels D about the force in the cranks, left and right, on the forward and back, downward and lift strokes. Environmental feeds will establish contour height and conditions like humidity levels, barometric pressure and ambient temperature. Bailey explains: "For example, we can plot out a course that a triathlon will take using GPS and upload all the information – altitude, gradients of hills and everything else. That can be programmed in. You can then go and ride that course, plot all the [live] information as well and use that same course for training, monitoring improvements and tuning performance accordingly." Aerospace backing As if to underline the sport's new-found popularity, British cycling is also getting a helping hand from the aerospace sector. Defence giant BAE Systems formed a five-year technology partnership with UK Sport last January. The aim of the deal, reckoned to be worth £1.5 million in engineering time, is to support British sportsmen and women in their quest for success at the summer and winter Olympics and Paralympics, as well as world and European championships. A number of initiatives are already underway, specifically with the cycling, sailing, taekwondo, shooting and bob skeleton teams. For cycling, there's a new velodrome laser timing system capable of tracking up to 100 cyclists simultaneously and relaying timings for each individual cyclist at critical timing points around the track with millisecond accuracy. It's derived from an ID system used to locate and identify friendly forces within a battle space from the command and control centre. For the bikes themselves, BAE's rapid prototyping facilities – usually reserved for military one-offs – have been used to produce two hirth couplings (usually found in gas turbine engines having the characteristic of low rolling resistance through the bearings) to transmit large amounts of power at the crankshaft and pedal point. For the British skeleton bobsled team, an IMU (inertial measurement unit) system is being developed to help in understanding the exact course the sled takes down the ice and its impact on performance. For trap shooting, BAE scientists, more usually responsible for developing unmanned aerial vehicle control software and explosive detection equipment, were challenged to develop an electronic device to measure accuracy and the consistency of timing between the first and second shot in Olympic double trap shooting to 0.01 of a second. The system developed comprises a directional microphone and a peak detection algorithm to determine the time difference between the two shots, while filtering out down range noise. It can be used to evaluate individual performance, which will assist in training to improve performance. Even more important perhaps than the assistance such alliances as these lend to maximising Britain's medal haul, is the opportunity they provide to promote engineering to young people. With declining numbers choosing to study science, engineering and technology in the UK, such countermeasures can only be helpful.