The Formula SAE Thread

[Mattscott77]

price still plays an important part in the judging, but not most cars are marketed as 15-20k$ kits

the problem with awd is weight, as always

[Guest]

The cost system is all sorts of wrong and many teams are very good at cheating with in the rules. Tu Graz car was costed somewhere around 15000 last year and there is not a chance in hell that car could be mass produced for less than 25000$

AWD would be sweet (http://www.palatov.com/cars/dp4.html) but it really isn't feasible for a car this small. There is no way to route a drive shaft to the front wheels with out going around the driver or raising the CG significantly(our CG last year was around 9", the car could rest on it's side w/o tipping and made it over 65 degrees in tilt before the judges wouldn't let us go further). If you went around the driver you'd still have to figure out where to put the front diff with the drivers feet in the center. Then you could raise them, and throw it under, or widen the front and have it offset. It would add so much weight and complexity it's not even funny. I believe it has been tried before though, I've also heard of a team using two 300cc engines...never seen pics though so it might just be hearsay.

Making a kit around a 4 wheeler would be sweet, it just wouldn't be competitive with where FSAE is at and is going.

I also think it would be nice to make it more affordable for students, but if you start adding in restrictions to lower the cost(ie reducing advanced materials or severely penalizing them) it also hampers students' learning experiences which is what this whole competition is about.

Being competitive is less about having a huge budget and more about having a large team + a lot of very dedicated members. Some of the large Euro teams we beat had full on F1 style semi trailers with car storage on one level and living quarters on the other...it was nutty. Over in the states we look wealthy because we have a SAE trailer(which our Baja team won a few years back). I still need to upload pics to photobucket from my Euro trip, I'll get to it eventually and post them up here.

It's a double edged sword. Personally I wish they would start a middle ground one called Rallye SAE with a few restrictions like 450cc single cyl and 16-18mm air restricter and cost restrictions to eliminate heavy carbon fiber use(chassis, wheels), but still allow it in certain areas like the steering wheel. Baja is too slow, formula is too expensive, rallye is incredibly awesome...compromise(?)

I just got word we are registering for FS Italy, I think that makes 6 competitions this year...We are going to owe the school a lot of money by next fall.

[Dutchie3719]

Looks good. Pity I won't be able to see the cars at Cali this year. We (RPI) have decided to go for a two year car. We lost too many people to internships, and don't have the funds we would like.

[Guest]

Looks good. Pity I won't be able to see the cars at Cali this year. We (RPI) have decided to go for a two year car. We lost too many people to internships, and don't have the funds we would like.

Will you be in Detroit? The Cali competition is ok, but it's nothing compared to Detriot. We did a two year car for 06/07, it helped us a lot with refining our 08 car and dropping from 450 to 400lbs for a 4-cyl. It's hard for the seniors working on the first year of the project. because you won't get to see the car you are designing a part of.

[Guest]

Now I can let the cat out of the bag. For 2010 we have teamed up with a German university, DHBW: The BA Racing Team, and co-designed the car. We will be building two identical cars and taking one to each of the 6 competitions we will be going to. We will be competing in Michigan, California, England, Germany, Austria, and Italy this year.

Joining teams has brought many benefits and just as many challenges. We will be able to attend more competitions and each student participant will be working on a global team which is great to put on the resume when looking for a job after school. However we also have run into a lot of challenges, time difference(9hrs), Language barriers, and Design philosophy(they want tons of power and a beautiful car, we want a light car with no extraneous material).

Here is our website, blog, and Youtube channel

http://www.global-formula-racing.com/home

http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/formulasae/

http://www.youtube.com/user/GlobalFormulaRacing

And a link to the FSAE forums with a post about us.

http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/630105024

[/i]

[jochem]

That's a very innovative idea. I hope the benefits outweigh the downside. I do see how it will greatly improve the learning factor, as well as the fun of going to european comps.

Why don't you sign up for the baltic open?

What power and wight are you aiming at?

[Guest]

We didn't sign up for the Baltic Open because of funding. Competitions are expensive to attend and as much as we like formula SAE many of the students have jobs or internships . Most of us also don't want to/can't afford $$$ wise to spend the whole summer traveling around Europe with breaks for competition. It's a lot more stressful than you can imagine unless you have done it before.

For 2010 we are aiming for 148kg with 53-55hp from the Honda 450 engine. The undertray we will be running is removable and if we do not find a significant benefit to running it we will remove it. With out the under tray and if we can get one set of carbon fiber wheels built the car would weigh in just over 138kg. Power to weight isn't everything, designing the car to be in it's power band around the track is more important. Last year in AutoX we were just 0.120 seconds behind Stuttgart(and 2nd overall). Stuttgart had ~95-100hp and a 300kg car with driver, we had 52ish hp and a 240kg car with driver.

It will be very exciting this year. Our chassis is being laid up right now 24hrs/day with 6 people doing 9 hour rotations.

Link to the live webcam of the composites lab. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/testing111122222

[Guest]

After a few 4am nights coming into dead week a lot has progressed. We are on schedule for a rolling chassis a week from today. It's going to be close and the chassis team is working 24 hours a day to get it finished. Hopefully we will have one bonded chassis this evening and the second one by friday.

Some pics

Chassis mold

[Guest]

Results here for the 2010 FSAE Michigan. I can't find them online but I've got them in my google docs and the link should work for everyone.

https://docs.google.com/a/ba-racing-team.de/viewer?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.1&thid=128a807b24b874f2&mt=application%2Fpdf&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmail.google.com%2Fa%2Fba-racing-team.de%2F%3Fui%3D2%26ik%3D747bd969a4%26view%3Datt%26th%3D128a807b24b874f2%26attid%3D0.1%26disp%3Dattd%26realattid%3Df_g9brpont0%26zw&sig=AHIEtbTwZOq6gZ5d9seEMkCKP0f2RMkiRg

I was not at the competition due to midterms, but GFR (listed as Oregon State University because we have to list a school name) won the competition by a pretty significant margin 907.8/1000 with the next closest team (Michigan) at 854.3, then TU Graz in 3rd at 843.4. Two of our other very good competitors Stuttgart and ETS both had problems in Endurance and DNF, however even if both of them had won and got the full 400 points we were still 17-25 points ahead. Proof of concept! We definitely had our share of problems including cracking the rear brake caliper and breaking a rear rotor(had 2 spares of each and we brought our '09 car to cannibalize if necessary). Considering the lack of testing time we had compared to other prominent teams(Stuttgart was running their '09 car with a year of testing...) and the severity of problems right up until 6am monday morning before driving to Michigan, I am very pleased with how we finished. California should be even better with an extra month to work out bugs in the car.