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Jorgen

Converting a RC cars specs to a 1:1 car?

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Great to see some math on the forums :)

I think speed does scale linearly with the 1:10 scale, i.e. a 1:10 car travelling at 50 km/hr would travel relatively to the ground as at 1:1 car moving at 500 km/h. At the same time, I agree with your calculations about drag losses. I think speed scales linearly, but the energy needed to overcome losses does not, as shown on your calculations.

Expanding on drag, there are other factors that would affect the energy needed for speed at a different scale. For example, the car is relatively closer to the ground than a 1:1 car, and therefore the wind shear profile will affect it differently. The air is static on the ground and the 1:10 car in general is much within the shear profile being closer to the ground.

Other factors that don't scale linearly are rotational acceleration of spinning masses, centrifugal forces on tires, etc.

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Forget the maths, check this out for fun. 

 

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I think it's important to remeber a greyhound or cheetah are faster than a horse or hare. It's not always a bigger is faster or smaller is faster. There are multiple factors that give an optimal result often in the middle of ranges.

For animals around 40 to 60 kg makes the fastest animal. 

Assuming speed would scale up isnt quite right, as the amount of engineering to make a car go 500 mph would vastly exceed the amount of engineering that would allow a 1:10 scale car to go 50 mph! Even my cheap Nikkos have a scale speed of 200 mph or so.

Didn't someone make a 1:1.25 scale Wild One? I wonder what the speed and wattage equivalent of the motor is? 

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All this talk about scaling speed is getting confused I think. There are 2 things people are talking about: one is literally scaling speed (a 1-dimensional quantity) from 1:10 to 1:1 (without any assumption that the full-size car would actually go that fast), and the other is speculation as to whether a 1:10 rc car travelling at speed X would mean an equivalent 1:1 car would travel at a speed of 10*X. These don't have the same answer. 

3 hours ago, alvinlwh said:

Isn't that 1:0.8 scale?

No, it is 1:1.25. A scale of 1:0.8 would be larger than 1:1. 

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