At the end of my time at The University of Toledo as an undergraduate, the senior engineering students had to present a design project at an exposition that is open to the public. Being a construction major and a total car nut, I wanted to incorporate my love for cars into the knowledge I've learned. I decided early on I wanted to determine the feasibility of taking an original track from Gran Turismo that didn't exist anywhere and see if it's actually realistic to build. I chose to develop a site for Apricot Hill Raceway because it seemed to have the most realistic topography that could be found within the United States and was not too intensive of a track due to the time constraint of one semester to finish the project. This is a blog that displays all the hard work my team and I have put into making this dream of mine a reality. I would like to give credit to all those who were included in this project:
Connor Ryan (Myself)(Team Leader)
Mohammed Almazrouei
Andrew Cary
Patrick Holland
Paul Jones
Bryan Kosh
Eric Wilhelmy
Project Advisors
Ms. Linda Beall
Dr. Nicholas Kissoff
Sponsor
Altorath Engineering Consultants
Objectives:
Realistically, we cannot design a full site with every consideration to building this track within our timeframe, so we had to decide on the level of detail we would go into so that we could touch of every point we intend to. Our main concern was to take everything within the confines of the surrounding safety barriers and not worry so much about the other features like grandstands and parking lots because those can be built on any scale of monetary investment. The track elevations were to be identical to that in the game without any variations, as well as track widths. Fencing locations were to be similar, but would be evaluated for proper stopping distances to ensure a safe track. Three locations will be analyzed, with a pavement design for each according to soil conditions to determine a final conceptual estimate of the best site. An ideal site would include the proper topography that minimizes excavation and disruption of existing land, while also being in a prime location for racing enthusiasts.
Method:
The development for this type a project is much different than the design of a typical public road. Normally, the existing topography dictates the design of a road by following the lay of the land and making changes in order to make the road safely traversable. Since the track dimensions are already determined and strictly enforced to remain the same, a suitable topography would need to be found in order to make the most feasible site. Before we could even look for topographies, we had to first determine the track dimensions.
Track Dimensions:
No details were publicly available regarding specific elevations throughout the track, so we had to go off of what data was given in the game. The only bits of information we had was the track map and the elevation change of 83.7 feet. The track was traced on paper and roughly inputed into a program called Bob's Track Builder (BTB). This program is used for designing race tracks for PC-based games and allowed us to export the track dimensions to MicroStation for the final site design.
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| BTB Screenshot |
Determination of Locations:
Once we had solidified the track dimensions, we could figure out what kind of topography the track sat on and the type of land we would need to find. The lay of the land was fairly simple with a common low point lying along the esses, hairpin, and straightaway. The rolling hills made for easy placement throughout the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, but an exact fit would again be tedious work for the best site possible. We looked at three different sites, each have advantages and disadvantages that would later lead to our final decision.
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| Proposed Locations |
Site Design:
Even though we did preliminary site design on all the locations, I will only expand on the details of the McConnelsville site since the methods were the same. After we were happy with the accuracy of the track in BTB, we imported the track data as a .CSV (Comma Separated Value) file into MicroStation InRoads Survey to design the final site. The track itself consisted of 3,780 individual points which we needed to connect to define the vertical and horizontal alignments of the track. Further drawing in BTB allowed us to design the barriers and import them into MS as well. Again, more points to connect together at 10' increments...
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| .CSV file imported into MicroStation |
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| Track profile generated in SketchUp |
InRoads allowed us to take the track profile and drape it over the existing topography. Through a function in InRoads, we could design the slope to existing topography and it would calculate the required cut and fill. We wanted a site that had matching numbers so that no soil had to be brought in or taken off site. A lower number would also ensure that the least amount of soil had to be excavated, therefore leading to lower costs. Some manipulation of the track placement had to be done in order to get the numbers we were looking for. Unfortunately, time limitations made us settle on a placement that required a bit more fill, but that minimal amount could be taken from other parts on the site in order to fit grandstands and smooth the grading throughout the site.
Pavement Materials:
The pavement materials are cross-referenced to ODOT materials and differ very slightly from that used in public roads. The top three courses are designed to give a smooth surface by placing a finer 12.5mm leveling course below a more durable 9.5mm surface course. The binder is also specific to the region in which the pavement is to be laid. Another difference in racing pavement is the addition of a permeable base course used to prevent unwanted water from percolating up through. As mentioned in Dr. Prowell's presentation, "the racing surface should not dictate the outcome of a race." Poor drainage could result in wet patches on the track that make for a more challenging race. Also mentioned in his presentation, "the best designed mix in the world, poorly constructed, will not perform as well as a lower quality mix constructed well." This is why more specialized paving companies like Advanced Material Services are used to lay down this type of pavement because of their precise methods of paving. For more information on these processes, please visit Dr. Prowell's presentation in the link above, or here.
Conclusion:
After so much schooling in site and pavement design, this project truly expanded our abilities to problem solve and used every bit of the knowledge we had acquired as a construction engineering student. Since the makers of Gran Turismo, Polyphony Digital, had put so much effort into designing a realistic track, we determined it was completely feasible to take a road course from their video game and place it in the real world.
Our final task in the project was to compile a conceptual estimate of the site. We decided to only include the materials needed to pave the site and line it with safety equipment since labor, equipment costs, and peripheral utilities would vary vastly between contractors. The following values were determined using RSMeans:
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| Initial placement of track |
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| Proposed Cut/Fill |
Safety Equipment Design Verification:
Another aspect of the feasibility of a video game race track being built is the realism of the safety equipment surrounding the track. Even though no part of the safety walls seemed too close for comfort, we wanted physical proof that drivers would be safe. Calculations we made concerning proper runoff with and without gravel traps, as well as certain sections with tire walls. Fit drivers can withstand up to 60g of impact force, and our calculations proved that the current design was actually a suitable distance away from the track, however the tire wall needed to be expanded to a thickness of 20 feet.
Pavement Design:
Pavement design was, again, another obstacle due to the nature of our project. A typical road thickness is determined by many differing factors in soil conditions and the amount of truck traffic to be traveling on the road. Heavy trucks tend to be the most damaging to roads, so required traffic load is used to determine the thickness of pavement. Since a race track has no real defined daily traffic, conventional methods (we were taught ODOT methods) would be tricky in our situation. We consulted Dr. Brian Prowell of Advanced Material Services who had made a wonderful presentation on his experiences paving Talladega Superspeedway found here. He informed us that racetracks typically use five inches of pavement within three lifts to produce a smoother finish. Using this data, we were able to compare this thickness with other projects we had done and found that the thickness of racing pavement is very similar to that of which is used in an arterial road.
Using these ODOT design charts, we listed all the information we had. We knew we wanted a high reliability with a .5 standard deviation, but weren't sure of the estimated axle loads so we started from the back side of the charts with the information we knew. Estimating a structural number from the data given to us by Dr. Prowell, we then used a delta PSI of 1.5 because we wanted the pavement to retain its quality for a long time. We then traced the lines back through and used the resilient modulus that we retrieved from the boring logs from our location. This then gave us an estimate of the axle loads which we then compared to the previous work we had done on an access drive to a factory that had a similar thickness of pavement. Since the first three layers were already determined for us, we really needed to just design the thickness of the subbase material. After trial and error of determining structural numbers, we concluded that our subbase would need to be thicker to compensate for the lower soil strength.
Using these ODOT design charts, we listed all the information we had. We knew we wanted a high reliability with a .5 standard deviation, but weren't sure of the estimated axle loads so we started from the back side of the charts with the information we knew. Estimating a structural number from the data given to us by Dr. Prowell, we then used a delta PSI of 1.5 because we wanted the pavement to retain its quality for a long time. We then traced the lines back through and used the resilient modulus that we retrieved from the boring logs from our location. This then gave us an estimate of the axle loads which we then compared to the previous work we had done on an access drive to a factory that had a similar thickness of pavement. Since the first three layers were already determined for us, we really needed to just design the thickness of the subbase material. After trial and error of determining structural numbers, we concluded that our subbase would need to be thicker to compensate for the lower soil strength.
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| Apricot Hill Pavement Summary |
The pavement materials are cross-referenced to ODOT materials and differ very slightly from that used in public roads. The top three courses are designed to give a smooth surface by placing a finer 12.5mm leveling course below a more durable 9.5mm surface course. The binder is also specific to the region in which the pavement is to be laid. Another difference in racing pavement is the addition of a permeable base course used to prevent unwanted water from percolating up through. As mentioned in Dr. Prowell's presentation, "the racing surface should not dictate the outcome of a race." Poor drainage could result in wet patches on the track that make for a more challenging race. Also mentioned in his presentation, "the best designed mix in the world, poorly constructed, will not perform as well as a lower quality mix constructed well." This is why more specialized paving companies like Advanced Material Services are used to lay down this type of pavement because of their precise methods of paving. For more information on these processes, please visit Dr. Prowell's presentation in the link above, or here.
Conclusion:
After so much schooling in site and pavement design, this project truly expanded our abilities to problem solve and used every bit of the knowledge we had acquired as a construction engineering student. Since the makers of Gran Turismo, Polyphony Digital, had put so much effort into designing a realistic track, we determined it was completely feasible to take a road course from their video game and place it in the real world.
Our final task in the project was to compile a conceptual estimate of the site. We decided to only include the materials needed to pave the site and line it with safety equipment since labor, equipment costs, and peripheral utilities would vary vastly between contractors. The following values were determined using RSMeans:
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| Final Cost Estimate (Conceptual) |
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| Final Site Drawing |
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| Final Site Drawing |
Senior Expo:
To conclude this project, our group presented this to the public at the schools biannual senior design expo. Our presentation included a poster board of the design explanation and design forces, a scale model of the proposed site design, and a simulator playing Gran Turismo 4 so that spectators could see how the track looked in the game, as well as the proposed plan.
