Formula SAE 2014

Ha, so the pics from last year are still on the first page.....this place is pretty slow/dead...
This year's:
[url="https://plus.google.com/photos/104102302644408236956/albums/6014619947693616241"]https://plus.google.com/photos/104102302644408236956/albums/6014619947693616241[/url]

These kind of cars are the norm now...
[img]https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/t4RmWDXro7qjKiovY-3BZmxPqb2U2oBO7eYlTD0SfVBI=w1444-h963-no[/img]

[img]https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-dv-f02dNa0U/U3g5x_to64I/AAAAAAAASUE/bzXk-v4NHng/w1444-h963-no/DSC01187.JPG[/img]

[img]https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/SjUutk9dOivEp3siE_RndWuBN-Whw858oAhJr6MKqYPm=w1444-h963-no[/img]

[img]https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/--vH5hmhunV4/U3g6DhpsWsI/AAAAAAAASUE/exB3HMxkJVY/w1444-h963-no/DSC01247.JPG[/img]

[img]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/t4E1gp4zo0NQi95MHvSiBCwqn7tjPziHoivjp5sW4LVs=w1444-h963-no[/img]

[img]https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-P44Yg-Gqvqg/U3g6hOeStMI/AAAAAAAASUE/j4vbRn83xIw/w1444-h963-no/DSC01351.JPG[/img]

[img]https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-O-aK_DqhSkA/U3g6u72xwEI/AAAAAAAASUE/VBMMxYhCTkc/w1444-h963-no/DSC01417.JPG[/img]

[img]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/AblhrPrENmN4yyxKnV5rjfWiXoXXinvO_318XQbTQd71=w1444-h963-no[/img]

Not necessarily this though...
[img]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3ESDcmVWh-g/U3g6gfK1J4I/AAAAAAAASUE/NmCLoSIS3zo/w1444-h963-no/DSC01349.JPG[/img]

they still remind me of the F3 cars from the early fifties, but then with ridiculous wings. Why are these so big in the first place? (sorry for not having informed myself about this Formula...)

The size is dictated by the need, the speed of the competition being autoX based, is naturally low. The slower the speed, the bigger the wing needs to be to generate useful downforce, at the same token because the speed is low, drag is significantly less important than out right downforce. The rule have also recently opened up significantly to allow for more aero...

I sorta doubt F3 cars back then quite have as much sophistication to them though...

RIT pictured:
[img]https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Bbn0gRLnGTT2fupALHpWNzzjmfamJyuDeoHS2s0Y-mOH=w1444-h963-no[/img]

For comparison, this is an "A-Mod" class car for SCCA AutoX. Which is not a student project and is actually made for(or made by) autoXer to race. Similar idea, and the aero need is similar also...

[img]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-UNetvugArpo/U26rG-izorI/AAAAAAAARhI/gGDZs1dF_8c/w1284-h963-no/14+-+2[/img]

This is FSAE Aero circa 2008:
[img]https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-NhgNiql_IDQ/SDHgwSs-TyI/AAAAAAAAARs/fck6HDq3EpU/w1280-h851-no/OthersFSAE_079.JPG[/img]

The rule variation from then to now is that the overhang for rear wing is more now, back then they cannot go past the rear edge of the tires, and the front overhang allowed is shorter...

can you help me explaining why the speed is low because it is autox based? And yes the sophistication John Cooper put in his contraptions is not that big.

AutoX by original intent is supposed to be under 60mph, it is a low speed, driving skill competition. Per SCCA's definition([url="http://www.scca.com/solo/content.cfm?cid=44509"]The Sports Car Club of America - Solo[/url]), the speed is kept low to reflect the speed being below that of the speed limit. Granted on more wide open course you can hit 60+ pretty easily. In FSAE the average speed is supposed to be between 30-60mph for a course. These days its been closer to the latter than former. Which actually aided the spread of aero in competition, since now it more advantageous to have aero with the higher average speed. But compare to full track racing, the speed is still low, so the regime which the car operates in is quite skewed towards the downforce than drag. This actually plays into other aspect too, such as cooling, most FSAE car needs a radiator fan since the speed is not high enough to allow for enough mass air flow to cool the car, so most teams tend to opt for a radiator fan with a duct to help pull air through the radiator. On full track car their cooling can operate without the fan because the speed is sufficient.

For a normal car autoX like ones I do on the weekends, most events drivers only needed 2nd gear for the entire course because the course is never that fast.

[quote=RacingManiac;1005763]AutoX by original intent is supposed to be under 60mph, it is a low speed, driving skill competition. Per SCCA's definition([url="http://www.scca.com/solo/content.cfm?cid=44509"]The Sports Car Club of America - Solo[/url]), the speed is kept low to reflect the speed being below that of the speed limit. Granted on more wide open course you can hit 60+ pretty easily. In FSAE the average speed is supposed to be between 30-60mph for a course. These days its been closer to the latter than former. Which actually aided the spread of aero in competition, since now it more advantageous to have aero with the higher average speed. But compare to full track racing, the speed is still low, so the regime which the car operates in is quite skewed towards the downforce than drag. This actually plays into other aspect too, such as cooling, most FSAE car needs a radiator fan since the speed is not high enough to allow for enough mass air flow to cool the car, so most teams tend to opt for a radiator fan with a duct to help pull air through the radiator. On full track car their cooling can operate without the fan because the speed is sufficient.

For a normal car autoX like ones I do on the weekends, most events drivers only needed 2nd gear for the entire course because the course is never that fast.[/quote]

Thank you, so I take it that it only has a two speed gearbox then. Are you aware whether some more well known drivers have marched through the ranks via FSAE?

The cars are driven by the students who design them.

It's not meant to be a showcase of driving talent, but more a contest of what school has better automotive engineers, which has now become which school has the alumni group with the most connections and money to provide sponsorship and funding.

I'd love to see a correlational graph on top positions in FSAE and funding per team over the years, and yes RM, I know there's a "value" component to judging.

[quote=Kitdy;1005773]The cars are driven by the students who design them.

[/quote]

Even students can be talented drivers...

Formula SAE's primary goal is an engineering design/project management competition. The "scenario" is you are designing a product(in this case a race car) made for a weekend autocrosser to run in autoX. The car is supposed to be able to be bought for someone for less than $25000 USD. The car that student build every year(and it is every year that they make a new car) is considered as a "prototype"(hence actual cost will be higher than if it is mass produced). The competition is split into 2 halves, static and dynamic events. Static event has a few components. Manufacturing/Cost which requires teams to provide cost break down of the car(in the form of a cost report, which is a 4-700 pages document...), and how production/prototype version will be different and how much it will cost the production version to be made. At competition you will also have to present a part chosen by the organizer in how it is manufactured(this part of the event have changed somewhat since I did it, so I am not sure how its run now). Business Presentation in which you have to present it to the "investor" how the business case for this car is going to be. Finally Engineering Design, which is where industry judges will judge the vehicle based on the merit of design choices made(and how teams defends their design), presents their data and test results and so forth. This is the "heart" of FSAE as an engineering challenge.

The Dynamic events are just that. Cars has to go through accleration(75m standing start IIRC), skid pad(figure 8), autoX, and a 22km endurance(split into 2 halves for 2 drivers) and with endurance fuel economy is also measured.

Total score breaks down from 1000 pts and IIRC its 400 for static and 600 for dynamics. Highest scorer wins.

It is ultimately a project management competition. Yes big teams have more money but they are usually also the one with much better handle on that aspect of things. It is made more challenging as some school do not take this as part of the actual curriculum and basically all students are volunteering for something that has more workload than a full time job. I don't find that cynical view of Kitdy entirely accurate, as some teams can have the resources and still do poorly while others might manage to still do well with less. Though these days at top level the industry support is beyond even when I was doing this in mid 2000s(case in point, AMG make a purpose built engine for a few German/Austrian schools). Still, even to a big school with lots of funding, ultimately people are still putting the time to do things. They are still students with full course load and working and extra 40, 60, 80 hours per week to work on this. When I had a job for my internship year I have a 40 hours/week job so I'd go to work in the morning(drive 80km), work to 5pm, drive 30km back to Toronto, work there on the car til probably 1-2am, drive 50km back home, sleep and repeat. And in school its actually mostly this and no real class time...

As far as driving goes, it is a huge part of the event because it is students driving student built cars. The driving talents varies a lot. And each team do differently to tackle the problem. At Toronto none of us are actual racecar drivers with formal training, but we usually manage to get the car done early(in my years at least) and have solid month of testing for the drivers to get comfortable. Plus also the drivers tend to be self motivated(we also narrow down the candidates the year prior by running some informal driver selection among team members). Other schools may go out of their way to find people with racing experience among student pool and get them to join. Some teams might just be lucky with those people already on the team(quite a few teams I've seen had various level of karting champion driving.). Since these cars are actually pretty high performance, the kind of driving needed is usually pretty high level, as such if somehow you have a really good 90% car, but you have only 50-60% drivers, they might still do worse than the team with a 60-70% car but with 95% drivers.

thanks for all this, it was sort of new to me, of course I had seen the "student " cars, but had no idea how it worked. It is probably somewhat similar to what we have over here, the solar challenge, where students have to design and built a solar/electricity driven car which they subsequently send to Australia to compete against other universities from all over the world (The Dutch have won this several times:))

How may challengers (groups of students) would you generally have in one year?

FSAE/Formula Student now have probably over 400 teams in the world with ~10 different competitions all over. 2 US competition, 5 EU competition, 1 Australian and 1 more each in Brazil and Japan. On top of those there are also non-officially sanction ones in Canada(Formula North, actually its this weekend Kitdy up in Barrie). And IIRC in China and India. The US event last week has 120 entrants. Typically each event has anywhere from 70-120 teams. Some teams do travel around. The rule mandate that a car can only be use for 1 year, so from the first event you enter you can use it until the last event before the the same competition of the next year. Oldest being the Michigan one since it is started by the Society of Automotive Engineers(SAE) in US. IMechE of UK adopted the rules in late 90s and started Formula Student in UK. Which grew to other EU competition in Germany, Hungary, Italy and Austria. The EU competitions in recent years have adopted different set of rules to allow pure EV cars, and team from TU Delft have been successful in that discipline. EV are actually faster as they can be quite a bit more powerful and power dense than the restricted gas engine.

and the main objective of this being to deliver qualified engineers to the automotive industry, and possibly to come up with technological improvements?

Well that should be more of a side benefit, rather than objective. But its a good thing to get people to actually "do" things instead of just read text book and do homework. I can tell you that companies value people with these kind of experience, and a lot of corporate sponsors for the competition are there to recruit people.

I'm not around to check it out this weekend.

Why Barrie?

Big enough lot, probably cheaper fee. This is the 3rd year now I think.