The National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) is the central institute for aerospace research in the Netherlands. This year, the NLR supports our team in the areas of research and production. Their support gives us the possibility to get acquainted with the high-tech industry on the border of production possibilities.

In cooperation with the NLR we are developing a material that is much lighter than aluminium but with similar properties. The material consists of compressed, chopped, carbon fibres. Being able to produce most aluminium parts on our car from pressed carbon fibres will get us one step ahead of the competition. Currently we are performing tests to verify the material properties.

Next to research, the NLR also grants our team a lot of support in production. At the beginning of the year we went to the NLR with the design of our front inner wheels, these have integrated motors and transmission. They have helped us a lot by checking if it was even possible to manufacture the design the way we had it in mind, allowing us to design at the cutting edge of technology.

Furthermore, the NLR also supports our team with their production facilities and time. This allows us to have our complex parts produced with very low tolerances. A great part of the DUT12 suspension is produced by the NLR at their head office in Amsterdam.

The NLR is mainly active in the aerospace industry and still, it supports an activity mostly seen as part of the car industry, because they realise that supporting educative projects like DUT Racing is of social interest and a great addition to the development of Dutch engineers. We would like to thank NLR for the wonderful cooperation, especially: Senne, Joachim, George and Bart!