quote:

My interpretation is consistent with the cars allowed by scrutineers to run at F-SAE.
Scott

The wheel pods were approved by the scrutineers and the car passed scrutineering with them on. It was later we were told we had to effectively cut them in half to remove the part covering the tyre, or remove them.

Jakob,

I smell a "Catch 22"...

Froggo's interpretation is "nothing but aero and exhaust behind the rear wheels". I had a quick look but couldn't find this in the rules (too many pages!). But let's assume that it is in there.

Next, we have:
"B6.6.1 A jacking point, ... must be provided at the very rear of the car."

Ah, "rules" ... don't you love them!
~~~o0o~~~

Edit: Oops! Scott explained above in his post (prev. page) while I was writing this.

Scott, IMO good engineering is to add one new well designed part, so that you can delete TWO (or more!) of the old poorly designed parts. Same with rules.

(BTW, Isaac Newton, regarding rules, "... more is in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.")

Z

quote:

Originally posted by Z:
I had a quick look but couldn't find this in the rules (too many pages!).

You can't find that because there is nothing like Froggo's interpretation.
Froggo (let's use this probably fake-name) needs to read rules again.

About the jacking point: don't forget that it is very useful (and safe) to lift rear wheels when starting the engine to warming it up or testing.

Now THAT'S a clarification! Thanks Scott.

If the official clarification looked like that would this thread contain insults and threats? Or would it instead be about the pros and cons of huge wings vs streamliner and floor?

However, I do see some prejudices from the status quo in there. Specific exceptions that allow the current norm are just milder versions of the current clarifications "view point" solution to allow wings to cover the wheels.

This is my main issue, the rule should allow competing concepts the SAME opportunities to achieve their goals, be it huge wing area or low drag streamlined flow. The use of incumbent terminology, eg "gurney" or "wing" includes a prejudice to the current norm. Can you draft a rule that does not rely on, or assume, a particular concept solution?

Pete

Scott is on the right track.

I was worried at Australia when the rules committee were looking at the winged cars to ensure none of the front wing overhung the front wheel. This goes against a precedence of legal cars with wings overhanging front wheels (including CAl Poly). Obviously this was ignoring the rear wing.

It is clear that the definitions in the rules need to be updated regarding this issue. The rules committee are usually very efficient at this so I would expect the nest rule set will cover it. However in the case of difficult interpretations there is a clear pathway for clarification. SAE quite readily respond to these queries, and do not share the information with other teams.

Pete, did UWA pass this design by SAE? If so was it just for a worded clarification or did you provide adequate drawings for them to make a reasoned reply? If you did were you initially allowed to run the pods or not?

Pete it is not the premise of the rules to allow equal competition between different concepts. Rather it is setting a framework around which students are encouraged to find the best solution. I see no reason for this to change.

Kev

Did anyone else chuckle when they read,

quote:

Originally posted by Scott Wordley:
Its quite simple, please let me clarify it:

followed by a full page of text?

I mean no disrespect. Just a friendly poke.

I agree that this situation is quite simple, but for a different reason. Different reasonable people can read the same rule and have very different reasonable interpretations. To me this implies that the rule has never been clear. The rule is simply inadequate and needs clarification. That clarification should take one sentence, possibly two. Just like the ground clearance clarification FSAE made last year.

One potential clarification that seems reasonable (not that my opinion really matters):
-With the steering pointed straight ahead, no part of the car may occupy the space that is directly above the top surface of a tire and below the highest point of that tire.

Again, not that my opinion matters. I think UWA should have been allowed to run the pods. Outside of safety judgments, when there is grey, I think the ruling has to go to the team.

Hi Chris,

this may be a practicable solution, although it would effectively rule out most rear wings as well as some floor panels. For the sake of further developing aero in fsae, I'd rather go for:

"With the steering pointed straight ahead, no part of the car may occupy the space that is directly above the top surface of a tire and less than XX (300 for example) mm above that tire and below the highest point of that tire"

This would form a box-like volume around a tire in which no aero can be installed unless it is higher than 300mm above the tire top surface... So you guys could still run a humongously huge rear wing ;-)

I'd be a bit opposed to a packaging box thats too big, it would give a minimum wing height, getting rid of one of the engineering decisions we have to make. I also think regulating aero vs bodywork would be difficult and lead to a lot of shitfights, our rear wing is only a few degrees AOA away from being a bluff body at the rear, and whose to say UWA didnt want airflow to be attached underneath their pods but were just really bad at designing wings?

Hows this for a rule, Lets make scruitineering fun! the scruitineer can write a number with chalk/a sticker on the tire, then rotate the tire so the number is anywhere on the top half of the tire the scruitineer wants (in UWAs case it would be near the front). and then team members have 5 seconds to say the number!

I dont mean to start another argument, but would anyone actually be opposed to getting rid of the whole "open wheeler" thing altogether? I think it'd be great to see if teams try to fill the gap between winged cars and non winged cars.

also, mini can-am cars = awesome

Steven,

I think it would be great to get rid of the open wheel rule altogether. It makes for a great design compromise. Full bodywork would weigh more, take more time, but may offer performance advantages. At the same time there is already a decent push to minimise plan area, which would be the effective limit to performance, as it is already with undertrays. It would be a great decision making.

Of course I am pretty biased as I am much more a fan of sportscar racing than open wheel vehicles.

Kev

quote:

Hows this for a rule, Lets make scruitineering fun! the scruitineer can write a number with chalk/a sticker on the tire, then rotate the tire so the number is anywhere on the top half of the tire the scruitineer wants

Lots of rule possibilities here. How about one that should be easy for scrutineers, "With the driver (or equal ballast) in the car and steering pointed straight ahead, no bodywork or aero devices within 6" / 150mm of the tire, measured in any direction."

Blast! Apparently even I failed at simplicity!

Lunits, I intended my clarification to be even less restricting than yours, only restricting the space "below the HIGHEST point of that tire". So take your solution and make X=zero and we are saying the same thing. It also would leave most undertrays untouched as it only restricts the space "directly above the top surface of a tire ". I think your solution is reasonable but I would prefer an even less restricting rule.

I also think removing the open wheel requirement altogether would be reasonable (and awesome, for the same reasons mentioned by Kevin).

Doug, I thought about a clarification with similar wording, but went away from it because I feel it would require definitions of bodywork and aero devices (easier to ban everything), and it would effect the space inboard of the tire. I could imagine people (me) making suspension links with intended aero effects.

Much as I like the idea of seeing some LMP looing FS cars, I think abandoning the open wheel race car rule would provide a massive advantage to teams with lots of resources. They could design and manufacture intricate carbon fibre bodywork designs and test them in a full scale wind tunnel.

Meanwhile the poorer teams are either struggling to get enough carbon fibre to make even the simplest of lightweight bodywork, while others are piling on 50kg of fibreglass that looks good in CAD but does very little for the car aerodynamically.

A bit of an exageration perhaps, but still an issue. And yes, I realise that there are already aspects of the competition that tend to favor the "wealthier" teams, but that cost reporting and other elements of the events tend to compensate for this, for the most part. But why add to it? Any team with limited resources will feel outdone when they turn up and see cars with amazing carbon bodywork, custom made carbon wheels, LRP'd titanium uprights, oh and custom designed engines.

Cost report won't do a dang to compensate wealthier teams to poorer teams.

How many of the teams running DAS had "forgotten" to list it in their Cost Report last year and got away with that? For example Uni Stuttgart had the cheapest car in Italy according to Cost Report. And Superfast Matt states in the book that Cost Reports is worth the cheating (that was by the old rules but still that seems to be the trend).

Every year we try to make the most complete and accurate Cost Report that's ever possible - and take a hit in points because of that.

Reminds me of those micro machine cars...

They could split it into to different classes, open and closed wheel. But having just merged C and E classes into one I can't see that happeneing, even if they did consider the idea.

So long as F1 remains the dominent motorsport in the eyes of the world and it remains open wheeled, I highly doubt we'll see any move towards closed wheel racers in FSAE.

quote:

Originally posted by Dunk Mckay:
Much as I like the idea of seeing some LMP looing FS cars, I think abandoning the open wheel race car rule would provide a massive advantage to teams with lots of resources. They could design and manufacture intricate carbon fibre bodywork designs and test them in a full scale wind tunnel.

Meanwhile the poorer teams are either struggling to get enough carbon fibre to make even the simplest of lightweight bodywork, while others are piling on 50kg of fibreglass that looks good in CAD but does very little for the car aerodynamically.

I could not disagree more.

The enemy of the poorer teams are rules where there is only one valid concept. Where there are many approaches to the one problem there is always the opportunity for less resourced teams to out fox the more resourced ones. Large well resourced teams love closed rule sets. It ensures that the money and time they have is not wasted on the wrong concept. We have seen this played out a number of times in professional motorsport with so-called "cost cutting measures". When there is an obvious optimum the rich teams dominate. When the rules are more open the smaller teams are comparatively more successful, but the rich ones complain endlessly about the cost of competing.

Allowing full bodywork offers some advantages, but not much more than is already available, given that the only part of full bodywork you currently can not have is the area above the wheels. However there is the known increase in weight and design/manufacturing time. If the cars had an easily met minimum weight it would be a simpler decision.

The materials cost is quite low for this sort of work given it can be fibreglass as easily as carbon, it is the labour cost that is high. While there can be a decent argument for not encouraging teams to have large monetary budgets the opposite is true for the size of teams. Every effort should be made to encourage FSAE teams to be as big as possible while maintaining improved learning outcomes for our future engineers. As a student you may see teams such as Monash (Australian example) as having an unfair advantage because of a very large team. Instead see it as 60 odd people getting an improved education.

Also, the general public sees FSAE cars as jumped up go karts rather than mini-F1 cars. I can also think of no reason to encourage an F1 connection for FSAE. I would rather we had a better connection to something like LMP racing where there is true innovation and focus on embracing technology that can be applied back to road cars. One of the many reasons we have seen the manufacturers abandon F1 and turn to sportscars.

Kev

I like your argument Kev (sorry, that sounded corny, I really do appreciate the feedback tho). I can see how more restrictive rules can favour the wealthier teams. Although I would question whether or not allowing full bodywork over the 'almost full bodywork' we have now, might in fact reduce the potential number of valid concepts rather than widen it, even without a minimum wieght limit, especially with more and more wieght being put on fuel consumption.

Also it remains that the poorer teams still have to have that stroke of genius, that good idea, to be able to perform the outfoxing. As well as the resources to implement it; a great idea is no use if you can't afford to make it happen, advantage richer teams.

I haven't gone round counting, but from what I've seen the teams with greater numbers are often (not always) the more resourced teams (bigger Universities often means bigger budgets and better facilities). More heads working on a problem could give rise to more clever ideas. On the other hand "too many cooks...", so I'm undecided on that one. My team last year can't have been too far short of 45-50 members, but not much more than half of them showed all that much enthusiasm other than to complete their own projects which form part of their degree (a good and bad thing). So we ended up with things done well bolted onto things done poorly, or sometimes realising quite late on that things hadn't been done porperly at all. Althoguh i think I'm straying from the issue, venting steam perhaps.

I'm interested what you (all) think, especially as to the potential consequences of full bodywork allowance.

quote:

Originally posted by Kevin Hayward:
The enemy of the poorer teams are rules where there is only one valid concept.
...
Large well resourced teams love closed rule sets.
...
We have seen this played out a number of times in professional motorsport with so-called "cost cutting measures".
...
When the rules are more open the smaller teams are comparatively more successful, but the rich ones complain endlessly about the cost of competing.

...

Also, the general public sees FSAE cars as jumped up go karts rather than mini-F1 cars.
...
I would rather we had a better connection to something like LMP racing where there is true innovation and focus on embracing technology that can be applied back to road cars.

Kevin,

I agree wholeheartedly!

And with the rest of your post. Just thought I'd re-stress some of the key points.

Z

Greetings all!

The INfamous UWAM 2011 wheel pod/fairings were tested in the Monash Wind Tunnel today. I'll let the UWA guys let you know how much drag it reduces. I took video of the flow vis/smoke: Monash Wind Tunnel Party: UWA2011 *WITH* wheel fairings/undertray

Photos from the day are here: Monash Wind Tunnel Party: ECU and UWA

FYI: the fairings DO NOT stick out past the tyres: UWAM2011 Wheel pod (top view, close)

quote:

Originally posted by DougMilliken:
Lots of rule possibilities here. How about one that should be easy for scrutineers, "With the driver (or equal ballast) in the car and steering pointed straight ahead, no bodywork or aero devices within 6" / 150mm of the tire, measured in any direction."

In a way like this brake cooling ducts will be banned.