Fluid dynamic
This type of cooling technology could revolutionise the way our racecars and road cars look
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms, or graphite, tightly bound in a hexagonal honeycomb lattice structure. At one atom thick, graphene is the thinnest material on Earth. It takes three million sheets of graphene stacked on top of each other to achieve the thickness of a human hair.
Its perfect crystalline structure and strong interatomic bonds also make it the strongest material on the planet, boasting strengths 200 times that of steel. Despite this, it’s also the lightest material, with one square metre of paper weighing 1000 times more than the same size piece of graphene. Not enough? It’s also an excellent conductor of electricity, and of heat at room temperature. Perhaps now you can start to appreciate why there is such a hype surrounding graphene, and why it has the potential to revolutionise many industries.
In the motorsport and automotive sectors, graphene has mostly been utilised in nanocomposites, enhancing resin systems through nanoplatelet reinforcement. This is where graphene is mixed into resins, which are then combined and cured with layers of carbon fibre, greatly increasing the inter-laminar bond strength and, consequently, shear toughness. The likes of McLaren and other F1 teams have experimented with graphene in composites, but it is currently banned under the technical regulations, along with carbon nanotubes.
The closest graphene composites have come to motorsport so V28N8), which made BAC the first manufacturer to develop a car incorporating graphene technology. Graphene-enhanced carbon fibre composite panels were used for the rear wheelarches, which not only improved the stiffness of the chassis but also reduced weight by 20 per cent.
