Introduction to the PhORS articles
By Brian Beckman
"I started this series in 1991 for my local racing club's printed
newsletter. The web had just been born, though the Internet was not yet public.
Nonetheless, I distributed the articles over the Internet at that time and they
become reasonably well known, especially amongst the autocrossing community in
the US. The first 13 parts were written in 1991, so they contain some very dated
ideas, such as using Scheme for writing simulations. However, the entire series
is presented here, as originally written. Perhaps at some later time I will
consolidate and update the series, but for now, I am focusing on writing new
parts. There are currently a number of 'live threads' in the discussion that I
wish to pursue at length.
My overall goal with the series is to present a fresh outlook on racing
physics, understandable to the technically inclined non-specialist. The problems
I consider come from a variety of sources. Often, they're motivated by computer
simulation, and just as often they arise from competition experiences. Some of
the later articles get very technical, but I always try to balance conceptual
discussion, which everyone should be able to understand, with mathematical
analysis, which might of interest only to specialists, and with numerical
results, which, again, should be universally accessible.
When I first started the series, I purposely avoided the standard reference
sources, preferring to figure things out myself from first principles. In the
past ten years, a number of superior source books, papers, and programs have
become available, and it is no longer sensible for me to avoid them. I've had my
fun, now it is time to 'get real.' So, in the later articles, I refer to the
well known books by Milliken, Gillespie, Genta, and Carroll Smith; as well as to
free simulation packages such as RARS, TORCS, and Racer.
There is a tremendous amount of activity in racing simulation nowadays that
computer hardware is fast enough to permit extremely detailed modelling of
racing cars in real time. The realism of Grand-Prix Legends, for instance, was
unimaginable in real time in 1991. Despite this growth, I continue to hope that
the Physics of Racing series can fulfil its original dual roles of translating
racing lore and craft into hardcore physics and of making that physics
understandable to real-world working race drivers and teams.
Finally, I wish to point out that these articles are FREE. I retain the
copyright ONLY to prevent the kind of theft that would make the articles
difficult to copy, meaning that I grant to everyone, everywhere a perpetual,
transferable, universal, royalty-free license to copy, host, post, translate,
convert, transform, and reproduce the articles in any form whatever, asking only
that the content and attribution not be changed and that the rights of anyone,
anywhere to further copy the articles not be restricted, say, by charging money
for copies."
