Anyone willing to share some information about active differentials?

We are studying the possibility of incorporate one in our next year car, but I'm not really sure is the FSAE regulations allow it.

Cheers!

You might be able to find your answer about if they're allowed here:

http://students.sae.org/competitions/formulaseries/rules/2009fsaerules.pdf

Who is "we" ?

What do you want to know?

Why active?

I spoke to one of the guys from Illinois at Detroit this year. I guess they have been working on one for a couple years. I don't know if it ever made it onto a car they took to competition, but they're presenting a paper at an SAE conference next month.

Our system wasn't an active differential by the strictest of definitions. It would be more properly termed an active fiddle brake. We couldn't quite get it quick enough in the transients for autocross, but it shaved .1-.15s off of our skidpad times in testing. It was on the car at Detroit but we knocked loose a motor brush on the second loop. The main problem with our system is that it increase fuel consumption significantly and now that fuel economy is 100 pts, the system is not as feasible the way we did it.