vehicle acceleration calculation.xls

Cool Excel Dyno / Acceleration Program Spreadsheet type thingy. Want a cool spreadsheet that calculates your car's acceleration, 1/8 & 1/4 mile times and top speed? Or do you want to plot your gear ratio charts (rpm vs speed)? Or maybe figure out the effect of using stickier tyres to reduce wheel spin?

Main Screen - Gear Ratio Chart - other charts include, traction, acceleration, distance

New Feature!!! - I changed the traction chart to show acceleration in each gear against vehicle speed, this lets you see when to change gears for the best results. These shift points are also calculated on the main page.

How does it work? -  During my spare time I decided to make a free program that calculates acceleration times. Excel is the perfect platform because it is so easy to use. The spreadsheet uses visual basic and user forms to make the spreadsheet very user friendly and powerful. By entering all the correct vehicle data, and applying a few basic engineering principals, it is easy to calculate the acceleration of a car.

How accurate is it? - It's as accurate as the information you give it. So the hardest part is finding accurate info. High powered cars will be sensitive to % weight on the driven wheel, and tyre coefficient of friction, both are used to figured out if the car will suffer from wheelspin or not. Slower cars are more sensitive to coefficient of drag and frontal area, both are used to figure out the wind resistance of the car which limits it's top speed and slows the acceleration. A friend ran 11.99 down the 1/4 mile and the Excel Dyno calculated he ran 11.99, so if accurate data is entered it can be very accurate.

What happens if I don't know my cars details? - Well you have to find it. The program contains a database of tyres / gearboxes / cars / engines, and allows the user to add their own. At the moment the database is quite small, but will grow if people send me their info.

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