Well said Claude!

Kev

Marshall,
this seems to be the 2003 car of Cal Poly Pomona, right?
I would say that this car does not meet the requirements, but obviously was allowed to run.
Maybe Michael can shed some light on this.

Fantomas

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Fantomas,

quote:

Originally posted by Fantomas:
Marshall,
this seems to be the 2003 car of Cal Poly Pomona, right?
I would say that this car does not meet the requirements, but obviously was allowed to run.
Maybe Michael can shed some light on this.

Fantomas

Yep. Obviously previous tech slip-ups aren't justification for letting it continue, however I don't see anything in the rules that prevents UWA from running what they showed up with. The wheel is clearly visible from above, given any reference "plain". There is no explicit restriction on partial obstruction and no requirement for 100% viewable from above.

And if we're going to split hairs, is the view of the wheel from above obstructed at all or just the tire? (it's tough to tell in the pics i've seen)

I haven't taken part in this discussion because of the nature of it but I would like to express my opinion about wheel pods in this case and overall.

I myself don't see a point why "ridiculous aero" (wheelpods) should be forbidden when another type of "ridiculous aero" (huge wings) is allowed. Wheelpods have their own tradeoffs and it should be upto the team if they want to run those or not. Of course the actual covering of the wheels should be forbidden as we are racing open-wheeled cars.

I think one of the most exciting aspects of this competition is the variety of choices and compromises you have to make, and the diversity of the cars.

And when even "the best of the competitions" isn't up for keeping a strict line about the rules why any other competition should? I'm referring to the "slight" interference between GFR and track surface in FSG 2011. I think it was absolutely the right call to let them run but it did take a lot of credibility from the organizers, after all those driver meetings stressing out how absolutely completely forbidden it is to touch the track surface with anything else than the tires.

Let's keep the competition open guys (and girls), right?

Markus,
I just had a look at the video recording of the FSG2011 endurance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFZyzhPkqyw

But I did not see, where they were touching the ground. Can you tell me a minute and second?

I was also live there and cannot remember that they were scratching the ground in Endurance.

Fantomas

Fantomas,
That's hardly a suitable video as the cars are rarely audible, but if you were anywhere near the track like I was, you could hear the GFR car scraping the ground everywhere. They should have indeed been made to lift their car IMO, given that other aero teams were duly respecting this rule.

Wouldn't have stopped them kicking everyone's ass though, they deserved to win!

Lee,
I was more or less deaf from all the single cylinder cars, so I probably would not have heard it anyway. But it is a good point. If the organizers tell you at every driver briefing that you will be banned for scraping the ground than they should act accordingly.

Fantomas

While we are talking about clarifications: I think there should be one on the jacking bars of cars with extended undertrays such as GFR or UWA.
My iterpretation of the rules is: nothing but aero devices and parts of the exhaust system may be behind the rear wheels. So what about the jacking points?
Teams like Monash went without a mid diffusor, I'm sure because of this rule. Why did the scrutineers let those cars through tech?

quote:

Originally posted by froggo:
While we are talking about clarifications: I think there should be one on the jacking bars of cars with extended undertrays such as GFR or UWA.
My iterpretation of the rules is: nothing but aero devices and parts of the exhaust system may be behind the rear wheels. So what about the jacking points?
Teams like Monash went without a mid diffusor, I'm sure because of this rule. Why did the scrutineers let those cars through tech?

A new member! Welcome!!!
That's so unusual to read a first post like this one.

I had a quick check on rulebook.
I think you refer to the mighty "Figure 13".
Figure 13 is used for fuel system (B9.5.1) and air intake system (B8.4.1)

Talking about rules, can you be more precise, please?

quote:

Originally posted by PatClarke:
... keeping in mind what happened last time you were active on the forum ...

Pat,

Yes, back in 2005 I got so bored with the endless oppression of "Creativity and Imagination" on this forum that I gave it away. Some of the negativity towards C&I was from the more dim-witted students, "Oh, it's toooo hard to think for yourself...". But most was from the officials and wannabe officials.

For as long as I can remember Pat, you have been telling the students that they should build a boring, conventional car, totally devoid of C&I. Not because it is simpler or easier to build, or faster (because it is not), but because it does not require a shred of C&I. You have continually discouraged the students from following FSAE Rule 1.1, the very SPIRIT of the event. Instead you have encouraged them to build the unnecessarily complicated and slow PAT car. That is, you have told the students that they will somehow become better engineers if all they do is "Polish A Turd"! But I guess that is your opinion, which you are entitled to.

However, the recent threat to ban UWA by the Australian officials (you?), just because they showed some "Creativity and Imagination", was plain WRONG. Your refusal to further explain that episode (eg. just where is the mysterious "plane of view"?) won't make the issue go away. Admitting that it was wrong would help.
~~~~~o0o~~~~~

Bemo,

I am sure that many of the voluntary officials have the right intentions. However, Michael Royce spending two-thirds of his post threatening the students with the officials' "power of God" to give them hell, suggests that some officials have the wrong attitude.

It is worth noting that FSAE is the one of the very few times that many of the students will have the chance to do some interesting engineering. They spend four+ years with their noses in the books (or in front of flickering CAD screens), and then likely the rest of their working lives doing even more boring stuff.

So please (all officials), don't go spoiling the students one opportunity for enjoyable engineering just because of some narrow-minded, petty interpretation of an opaquely clarified Rule ...... that isn't there.

(BTW, I have done lots of this voluntary work, but in different sporting arenas (eg. footy, etc.). It is very often the same, one dim-witted official who wants to spoil all the kids' fun. The bigger the event, the worse it gets...)
~~~~~o0o~~~~~

Students,

All successful societies start off with lots of "Creativity and Imagination". They also all eventually die out, very often from the petty power struggles of middle level officials who strangle each other with ever lengthening red tape. Read the history books.

When FSAE started the founders put "Creativity and Imagination" front and centre, as Rule 1.1. I guess they did this because they thought it would help develop better young engineers, and in the long run a better society.

Ten years ago Rule 1.2 asked the students to build a high performance, but low cost, easy to maintain, and reliable, prototype racecar for the amateur autocross market. That is, the students were challenged to solve a real world problem. This second most important rule is already gone, and the brief is now to build a car that only has to be "sufficiently durable" to complete one FSAE competition. Real world engineering is no longer relevant.

How long before the "Creativity and Imagination" Rule A1.1.1 is also deleted? It is already subordinated to a sub-clause of Rule A1.1. And so far no official wants to talk about it, let alone support it.

How long before "We all have to move forward...", and the car becomes a "single spec PAT" car? Don't think it won't happen. Look at F1, Indycar, Nascar, etc., etc.... Note that FSAE hybrid rules are already "single spec" in the sense that only electric energy storage is allowed, and not flywheel storage, or pneumatic, or anything C&I....

If any of you students like the idea of using your "creativity and imagination", then you have to make your opinions heard. This Forum is a good place to start. If you remain silent, the witless drones will surely take over.

Z

quote:

Originally posted by STRETCH:
Fantomas,
That's hardly a suitable video as the cars are rarely audible, but if you were anywhere near the track like I was, you could hear the GFR car scraping the ground everywhere. They should have indeed been made to lift their car IMO, given that other aero teams were duly respecting this rule.

Wouldn't have stopped them kicking everyone's ass though, they deserved to win!

After no issues at California, Silverstone and Spelberg, we did have problems with touching the track at Hockenheim, although "everywhere" is a bit of an exaggeration. Our main problem was our front wing on the big bump midway through the course. After the autocross we raised the car ~15mm (about as high as we could get) and trimmed the bottom edge of the front wing sideplates nearly flush with the airfoil, but we still touched the track during endurance.

As for respecting the rule, none of the other aero teams at FSG-11 ran wings. Based on inspection, we didn't have much problem with our undertray touching, just a few small scrapes on the kevlar. Our front wing at FSG-12 should have a lot more clearance.

Anyway, word of warning for Monash, I think your FSAE-A-11 front wing will hit hard at Hockenheim unless you do some redesign. The bump in the middle of the Hockenheim track is big enough that most the fast cars get airborne.

quote:

Originally posted by Marshall Grice:
And if we're going to split hairs, is the view of the wheel from above obstructed at all or just the tire? (it's tough to tell in the pics i've seen)

whaddyarecon?

quote:

Originally posted by Fantomas:
Trevor,
all of the shown cars in your post are legal according to the clarification that Pat has mentioned.

Look closer. Every one of them has aero (mostly endplates) obscuring part of the wheel in plan view AND closer than 250mm to the tyre.

I just read this and I'm pretty appalled at how ridiculous this has gotten. You have students talking of lawyers and officials of prejudicing teams. How this has degraded into personal "you're a idiot", "no you're an idiot" is beyond me.

Something I have come to realize is that no matter how much FSAE matters to you now it is just playing race cars. When you finally finish up uni (4-5years of your life) and get out in the work force (40+ years of your life), there will many times that you will get screwed and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.

You will have the best most awesome design and your boss or client will say "no, we've changed our mind we don't like it" and you will have to like their decision. You can bitch and moan and say "but the brief said" and all you'll get back is "so what, we have the money". I know this happens as it's happened to me twice this year and I've done it to a contractor last week. Creativity and innovation is encouraged in the real world but then there are constraints that you must work within and these constraints will change and then change back.

Ask the rule committee what you want then deal with the reply. That's life.

While I doubt Z's going to win any awards for diplomacy anytime soon, I do like his idea of creativity and innovation.

Personally, it is much more fun, rewarding and educational to try and win the event with a bunch of 80-90% developed ideas compared to a 98% optimised but rehashed car. When you're going to the nth degree of rehashing/optimising old concepts, it becomes a resources/project management competition.

A new idea or design develops and tests the fundamentals of a students understanding. If a student doesn't have a good enough understanding, the design will not work quite as intended (or at all). This fact forces the students to have confidence and trust in their own understanding of fundamentals.

This confidence and fundamental understanding is something which is severely lacking in most engineering graduates today.

I like your idea, brettd, of fresh concepts every year, although from my experience this can prove to be a high risk endeavor, especially if your team doesn't get much support or advice from experienced staff at your university. Having said that, not all the fun of FSAE/FS comes from winning or doing well, participation alone is extremely rewarding in my book.

I agree that it's good for a student to be confident in his or her work, on the other hand if someone gets overconfident, even cocky, then things are bound to go wrong and the rest of the team will pay the price as well. If there's one thing I can't stand it's somebody presenting their work on the day of a design deadline with a smile on their face, and being able to tell with a simple look at the CAD model that it won't work.
----------------------------------------o----------------------------------------

Getting back on topic now, I would also really like to see some clarification of this whole open wheel, plan view, rule confusion. My initial interpretation of this is that taking the horizontal rectangular cross-section of the wheel-tire assembly, passing through the central axis of the wheel, and extruding upwards to infinity giving a column within which no bodywork, aerodynamic element or anything else for that matter should be placed. I am confident that no official would dispute this interpretation.

What worries me is that another team might take a more relaxed view of the rule and still be allowed to compete. Now I am not saying that said team would be in the wrong, they had a different view and the officials did not disagree with them at that event, and I would congratulate them on their success. And secretly hope that at the next event the official sees things a little bit more my way. And that's the problem, it's all down to the officials interpretation, which can vary. It's very easy to be sure you don;t infringe on the rules, but somebody who takes that risk could end up with a very unfair advantage.

As a team weighing up whether or not to commit time, money and resources towards developing an aerodynamics package, it is hard to simply just look at it as an engineering problem when regulatory politics and disputes are making the whole thing very fuzzy.

And when you get fed up of worrying about whether or not your designs are going to be treated fairly, you give up, decide that it's just not worth the effort and you throw the idea of running any significant aero out the window.

For students looking to start careers in the motorsport engineering industry, as many that participate in these competitions are, this is a tragedy. Not only do they not get to express their skills and creativity as an engineer in what could be the most versatile aspect of the vehicle design, but they also miss out on valuable experience working with aerodynamics principles and techniques before heading off into an industry which, for the most part, holds expertise in this area higher than any other.


So without wanting to sound like a broken record, I ask again, please somebody clarify the rules about aerodynamic packaging! When you do I can assure you that you will see more innovation and creativity, more enthusiasm from participants, and more interesting car designs than ever before.

I'm disappointed that no one here has been able to make any logical sense of this issue. Its quite simple, please let me clarify it (as I see it, and possibly as the Aus rules committee sees it(a guess)):

The commonly accepted view is that an OPEN-WHEELED CAR is one where no part of the the BODYWORK covers the wheels in plan view. It would help if this was formally clarified in our rules.

The rules relating to AERODYNAMIC DEVICES (including wings, undertrays and splitters) specify their allowable package space (30 inches forward of front wheels, 12 inches rearward off rear wheels, no wider than widest outside of tires at hub height). There is no specification stating that these devices are not allowed above the wheels. Practically every FSAE team to ever run a rear wing has had it over the rear wheels. I see no reason why this should suddenly be considered illegal (as I will explain below), or anyone should be getting stroppy about it.

WINGS are considered AERODYNAMIC DEVICES... BUT NOT BODYWORK. Hence they are allowed above the wheels. The rule regarding their allowable width basically suggest this, considering we were not formerly allowed to have a wing behind the rear wheels. I consider the old Cal Poly car pictured above completely legal under our existing 2012 rule set. Its a WING, NOT BODYWORK.

WHEEL PODS (such as those presented by UWA) are considered AERODYNAMIC DEVICES AND BODYWORK. Hence they should satisfy BOTH rule sets.

What is the difference between bodywork and a wing you ask? That is obviously open to slight interpretation but I would say a wing is designed to maintain attached flow on all surfaces of the profile (bar the rear of the gurney flap which is a commonly used wing design feature) . They have a trailing edge where top and bottom surface flows rejoin each other. BODYWORK on the other hand is generally bluff at one end. An "infront of wheel" pod is bluff at the rear, near the tire and no attempt is made to reunite the top and bottom surface flows in a manner that maintains attached flow (ie trailing edge). The "behind wheel" pod is bluff at the front and there is no suggestion of a leading edge.

Wing endplates should be considered part of the wing. Gurneys are a commonly used design feature on endplates as well so should be allowed, whilst streamlining of the endplate combined with a "bluff" rearface would land you back in the land of BODYWORK, regardless of the fact that it is mounted to the outer end of a wing.

Before anyone asks, I would also classify undertrays and splitters as BOTH AERODYNAMIC DEVICES AND BODYWORK. Hence not allowed over the wheels in plan view.

To complete the Venn diagram, I would also postulate that a NOSE CONE must be considered BODYWORK but not an AERODYNAMIC DEVICE, based on the fact that no team's nose cone has EVER been forced to comply with the aerodynamic device package space. I would guess that the vast majority of teams have nose cones more than 30 inches ahead of the front tyres.

I can understand people confusion, due to the fact that in many other racing series no distinction is made between wings and bodywork (or fairings). FSAE is different in this respect.

My interpretation is consistent with the cars allowed by scrutineers to run at F-SAE. Please correct me if there was a car there that did have bodywork over the tires that was allowed to run, but I didnt see any (RMIT C were very close at the rear). Whether the scruitineer took a similar view to my own I do not know. A simple clarification either at the event or during the course of this thread would have helped enormously, diffused the entire issue and clarified future expectations.

I am sure it is on their list of things to do. Hopefully somewhere below the correction to the competition results. Has it been 4 months already?

Scott

quote:

Originally posted by Scott Wordley:
... no one here has been able to make any logical sense of this issue...

The commonly accepted view is...

Scott,

Ah... "common sense", the least common of all the senses! If common sense really was common to all of us, then we wouldn't need any rules. But it aint, so we do.

The main problem here is that many parts of the FSAE Rules are an abomination (mostly the newer additions). Three typical examples are capitalised in your post, namely "OPEN-WHEELED CAR", "BODYWORK", and "AERODYNAMIC DEVICES". Not one of these important phrases has even had an ATTEMPT at a DEFINITION!!! (No doubt due to a lack of Euclid... )

As an example of the consequences of this sloppiness, earlier Froggo questioned whether the jacking bar was legal behind the rear wheels, a place where only "aero devices" are legal. "No problem!" say the team. They just have to claim that their jacking bar is an "aero vortex generator", and thus an "aero device", and thus legal.

If that sound a little lame, and lacking in common sense, then consider this. As I have mentioned before, Max Mosely and the FIA banned Renault's inertial dampers (a simple spring-mass system completely SEALED inside a box!) because they were "movable aerodynamic devices"! And that was in F1.

When it comes to officials interpreting rules, common sense is tossed straight out the window. If it isn't clearly defined, then anything goes.

The rules need a thorough rewrite, preferably by someone who understands the value of clear and concise definitions. So if something unusual comes along (ie. something creative and imaginative), and there is nothing against it in the rules, then it is allowed to run.

To repeat the really crazy part about all this, the UWA wheel-pods were an attempt to improve fuel efficiency. Nevertheless, the officials banned them! Now where is the common sense in that?????

Z

quote:

Originally posted by Z:

As an example of the consequences of this sloppiness, earlier Froggo questioned whether the jacking bar was legal behind the rear wheels, a place where only "aero devices" are legal. "No problem!" say the team. They just have to claim that their jacking bar is an "aero vortex generator", and thus an "aero device", and thus legal.

But then you still have no jacking bar ( you have an "aero vortex generator"). But the rules say, you need one. So it isn't a solution, is it?

Forgot to mention:

Bob: thanks for the heads up. We are working on it now and will make sure we have additional clearance for Europe.

Froggo: I see no rule relating to any limitation on the rearward location of any part of the car other than aero devices, the exhaust and the intake (due to roll envelope). The jacking bar must be at the rear of the CAR. There is no formal specification to limit this rear location. The only practical limit imposed is based on the effective operation of the jacking bar, which is a function of the lifting height of the quick jack (specified in the rules or addendum), the location of the bar (height and rearward position) and the droop travel of your suspension. If you have zero droop it can be as far back as you want, theoretically. If you have some amount of droop, at some distance back away from the car the lifting the jacking bar by the height provided by the quick jack will fail to get the rear wheels off the ground... Hence failure of the jacking bar functionality. Front wings can also complicate matters if they are very low.

We borrowed the bar used by the local organizers and built an exact replica of it just to check this stuff ahead of time.

An interesting potential scenario we noted was the ability of a car to pass the jacking bar functional requirement (lifting rear wheels off the ground) , while the car is either partially or fully suspended on the front wing at the other end!

Makes it a little hard to move anywhere!

Has anyone ever seen a scruitineer actually use a jacking bar in anger? (ie on track?)
I certainly haven't.
Most comps seem to keep only one on hand for the purposes of scruitineering only.
It's to tempting to move most broken cars off course by pushing on the wings, or by lifting them by the wishbones(if you are TUG). I don't mean to poke fun at the officials (I would do the same), Im just pointing out the fact that the jacking bar rule offers no real value to our comp, but it's been there for 20 years and probably will still be there 20 years from now. I'll probably still be complaining about it.

Another one to add to your rewrite list Z...

How about this:
For every new rule we add to FSAE let's take one away.