Just a heads up for those interested; the guys from CSU should have the video of the comp cut together by the end of January, but it may be a little longer owing to their own commitments.

quote:

PS, The team that won and won well, Monash, had a full Aero car, with the aero download fed directly into the uprights. They also had a spool!
That should start some head scratching!

Perhaps their rear roll axis is a mile below CG??? You still end up with half the downforce of the wing. Head scratch...

quote:

Originally posted by MRT_Xii:
Perhaps their rear roll axis is a mile below CG??? You still end up with half the downforce of the wing. Head scratch...

Half of the aero downforce can't just disappear. I think it's a bit of a baited question from Pat (shock! ) - whenever you have high steering angles, car speed is low, so there will be little downforce generated from the wing. I would think you could almost ignor the wings for low speed cornering, assuming the weight swinging around above the drivers head is not significant.
At high speeds when a lot of aero downforce is generated, steering anlges will be very small and so potential understeer issues from the spool are not that bad.
Their suspension geometry is obviously designed to unweight the inside rear quite a lot, and Monash demonstrated that very clearly in the skidpad event! Perhaps more so than non-aero cars that run a spool?

Hi All,

Just wanted to say it was my first experience of FSAE-A, and although not quite on the same size scale as FSAE-West of FSUK, I had a fantastic time. Special note needs to be given to the ability of spectators to get so close to the action unlike the UK (for Fig of 8 and the mamouth walk required to get to the outer stands) and FSAE-West (where you need Bino's).

I worked tilt on Saturday and had a good look at quite a few of the cars. I was thoroughly impressed by UWA's suspension. Special note goes to the Military guys who I had a good chat with and the guys from Auckland, who not only had a chat with me about their engine design, they did it while standing in the queue to the design finals.

I was marshalling later in the Autocross and my car of the day was Auckland who didn't look quick until they came hammering through our section and it was bloody impressive! It was also interesting to be on "the otherside" i.e. having to call in problems I spotted while cars were driving (unfortunate that I have shit hot vision!). Controversial, but everything I called, the teams were sent off to fix.

Actually, our rear roll axis is probably relatively high. I can't say exactly how high, because we raised it in testing to make the car handle, and have not yet measured where it went. In as much as aero affecting wheel loading, we just add the appropriate amount of downforce to each wheel weight after we do our weight transfer calculation and design our roll stiffness distribution around that.


Since I'm posting now, I'd like to say I had a blast at comp, and it was a pleasure to meet all the teams there, in particularly, Auckland, who are always a fun lot, Cameron from Melbourne; a very switched-on guy, and The USyd team, with their magic uni-joints, The ADFA crew, the Thailand team... I could go on...

I am currently in the process of sorting through the pictures I have taken for the competition. However, my signature will take you to the album where I have already uploaded some select photos.

Cheerios

Wow, what a comp!

There are tons of people I would like to thank... in particular

Auckland - Hard luck again this year, but a great bunch of guys and a pleasure to host each year. If you can get that car reliable its going to be a weapon. Bring back the wings!

Moke TV - Brent and crew, I couldnt imagine comp without you guys. Please keep coming back and doing your very special thing, we all need to be reminded not to take ourselves too seriously some times, and you guys do a great job of that. Managed to snag a pink t-shirt too, score.

UWA - Pushed hard all weekend and did not give up an inch. Pete was very unlucky not to take us down in Autocross (hitting the last cone) and also set incredible times in the second enduro. I had our pace board out in 2nd enduro, just to make sure he could keep his fastest lap ;p hahaha Glad we caught you on a bad weekend! Thanks also for the opportunity to car swap on Monday, I think we will both take away a lot from the experience. Would be good to get as many teams as possible there next year, us Aussie teams need to stick together and learn from each other if we are going to take it to the germans.

Swinburne - A great bunch of guys and an amazing new car, it just looked right everywhere. Unlucky this year but expecting you to come back strong next year. Hope you get to keep your new advisor he seems good for the team.

ADFA - Amazingly innovative car, we have always had a thing for de dions, great to see someone do it right. Smart, generous bunch of guys too, special thanks to sergio who helped us sunday morning by drilling lockwire holes in 20 or more bolts for us so we could get out for that second enduro.

UNSW - Ross and Kegsie, you crazy men. Cant believe what you guys did to get that car here, and almost to the end of an enduro. Madness.


A big thanks to the organisers, scruitineers and marshalls, no kidding, even with small number of volunteers this was the best organised FSAE-A event ever... and not just cos we won.

Scruitineering was pretty quick and efficient and safe. While I missed chatting with Michael and Suzanne I did not miss arguing for half an hour about whether a seat belt was 1 degree outside the allowed angle or not.

For the first time ever Acceleration event was staged PROPERLY, every single time. None of this staging then rolling backwards, or the old wipe the tyres and roll it backwards tricks. Trust us we tried! Every car was in the same position, every time. Such a relief to concentrate on the car and the driving rather than trying to get an advantage in staging.

The Autocross and Endurance tracks were sensible, varied and within the specifications laid out in the rules. Driver's hands didnt fall off from an endless line of 6m slaloms, and because of that Im pretty sure much less cones were hit overall, making for better racing, better viewing and safer marshalling. Why cant it be like this every year?

So a special thanks to Marissa, Flip, Mark, Adrian, Rob, Rod, Stephan, Steve, Chris and Chris for making that all happen. If anyone has contact details for Erin Heasman I would love to thank her for the many years of putting up with my complaints! She'll never believe we won though.

And lastly, a special thank you to both Pat and Claude. While we haven't always agreed with what you guys have had to say, you have both pushed us and much of the competition to do better, think more, and work harder, which is always a good thing.

I think thats it...

Cheers,

Scott Wordley

Monash University
2000-2009
"oh... and the wings don't work."

You sound like you are not going to be around anymore Scott and we all know that's never going to happen. There is a spot on Team, Team Support Team for you next year so start looking for a jacket.

And it's Safety Salmon.

Results are out...

http://www.saea.com.au/formula-sae-a

quote:

Originally posted by Scott Wordley:

Pete was very unlucky not to take us down in Autocross (hitting the last cone) and also set incredible times in the second enduro.
Cheers,

Scott Wordley

Monash University
2000-2009
"oh... and the wings don't work."

Geez i thought there was a limit to the number of competitions one could attend let alone drive! Precious must be overdue haha

Wow... What a competition.

I think the spirit and atmosphere at the comp this year was the best I have experienced since 2004. Team's were helping each other out left right and center. We had a horrible time passing noise but managed to get through after stuffing the exhaust with steel wool, welding restrictions in (couldn't reach test rpm at one stage). Eventually we added a section of tube after the silencer which pointed our exhuast up and over the rear wheel. Unfortunately we missed skid pad and acceleration.

We scored our best ever result in design at 9th place. The majority of our feedback related to not having any supporting evidence. The judges seemed to be ok with my justification for using beam axles and we had a really good spread of knowledge across the team. We will be doing more work to quantify our decision over the next year.

We had some people tell us we were fools for using dependant suspension and others say we were inspired. It is a concept we are really keen to explore and expand upon. I will be taking the advice of Ron Tauranac and looking for opportunities to simplify (Ron thinks beams are silly by the way). I was telling Claude about our suspension and he said "why would you have beam axle when you can have independent suspension... it is a race car... it's like having the fat ugly girl when you can have a beauty". At least I can touch my roll centre .

The front beam is a peg and slot design inspired by Z and the model T Ford. I spent about 4 hours on the phone to Erik (Z) about this time last year. The rear was developed in conjunction with my supervisor at ADFA who has been nudging me to try it for several years. I have to say the torsion beam part of the rear design was his idea. The rear is de Dion Twist Axle with Watt’s linkage. It was fun to swap notes with Paul Clausen from Adelaide about beam axle designs and he was quite complimentary so it’s good to know we have some fans, no matter how biased they may be.

I will be posting some pics up on a photo bucket account very soon. Search for oz_olly.

Finishing endurance for the first time in four years was the highlight of my FSAE year for sure, thanks to all the guys for the support and especially to Rob Chadwick and the others who showed great application of common sense and let us continue the endure after our car was spotted dumping water out of the cooling over flow.

I am keen to start a beam axle thread or continue an old one so if your are keen Rob, we can move start a more beam specific conversation there so that I don't hijack this thread.

Cheers

Olly

ACME Racing
UNSW@ADFA

Thank Heavens its over for another year!

It was our first year back on the scene and we'd like to think it was pretty successful even if the points for us dont reflect it.

Considering we were essentially a team of 4 people, we're stoked to have competed in every event this year. For the 5 years I've been on the team at UTS, this was the first we've passed scruiteneering so its a pretty big achievement from our end.

Unfortunately 4 people cant produce a car that is 100% but i think we got as close as we could under the circumstances. And we're really happy with our 61 sec auto X time. Considering we have no Anti roll, hardly any damping, we had an electrical issue, engine misfiring and we made 3 mistakes on our lap, we were pretty happy.

Unfortunately, our steering system just wasn't up to scratch to last the whole enduro. It was actually getting heavier with every lap so our driver decided to park the car. An unfortunate event but easily fixable for next year. We're sorry for anyone we held up and sorry to the marshals who constantly had to replenish the cones. We were despirately trying to complete every event this year but I guess enduro will just have to wait.

A big thanks to the guys from Swinburne for trying to help us out over the weekend as well. We've still got no idea whats causing the engine issue but we plan to rip out the loom and start from scratch to make sure it never happens again. You should also take the credit for keeping a few of our team members motivated for the coming year after a quite disapointing event from our end. Consolations on the electrical issue for enduro btw.

And we still dont see the VW in our cars rear end? but thanks for all the nice coments regarding the shifter and the bodywork. Considerable time went into them both so its nice to know they were apreciated.

Thanks for the great event guys and we'll see you next year. We'll have event photos up soon but the website is all done so check it out.

Jon

I have posted some quick CAD renders at http://s928.photobucket.com/home/oz_olly

I will add some photos once I get them. I didn't manage to take a single photo of my own over the weekend. Hopefully my team mates have some.

We also have more pics at www.fsae.unsw.adfa.edu.au (our new web address)

Cheers

Olly

Scott et al,
Yes, Suzanne and I did miss being down under this year. Like a lot of people, the travel money just was not in our budget.

Scott, I know we are tough on the safety items, but I never realized we hassled you to that degree over seat belt angles!! The belts are probably the second most important safety item on the car (after the helmet), and we have seen some dubious installations over the years. Hopefully, the changes on belts in the 2010 Rules will improve things.

Congratulations to all on a safe, and from all accounts, enjoyable event.

Do they plan on posting the FULL results with actual times?

Mike

Hi Michael,

I hope you realise that I was having a bit of a joke! As one of the few teams to have a serious off-track excursion at speed (2002) we do know the importance of belts and helmets, and appreciate why you guys are tough on that stuff. I was just a bit disappointed that we put 4 different seat belt mounting holes into our chassis and didnt get a chance to let you choose your favorite! As you say, the 2010 changes should improve things in that respect.

Hope to see you guys down here again next year, or possibly at Formula Student UK,

Scott

Hey guys, here's a Wollongong perspective on the competition...

For our team, we had an excellent competition. We finally returned to the podium after 3 years which was a fantastic feeling after such a horrible year. At mid way through the year our team dwindled from about 8 to 4, meaning our timeline was shot to hell from there. It was a fantastic effort to even arrive at the competition, let alone do so well in all events, except design and skidpad, but that is another story all together which next years guys are chasing up. Our stupidly heavy steering caused by god knows what hurt us in the corners, however our very well tuned turbo made us crazy fast from a rolling start on the straights which definately got us over the line. All in all an extremely good effort for all those involved, and I hope next years guys can turn that 3 into a 1.

The competition itself was also great. Despite the lack of volunteers the event seemed to run smoothly. We were never turned down when asked for help by any team which really created a good competition environment. Congratulations to all teams for achieving their personal goals and overall results.

We have around 40GB of video and photos so I'm hoping someone will put that up on our team website soon.

Cheers guys,

Ben Williams,
2009 UOW FSAE Team Leader

The beam suspension sounds real interesting, especially since I'm a bit of a fan of the early stuff.

Can you give some insight as to why you went with that design?

Hey Brootal,

If you go over to the beam axle thread in General Discussion I will answer there. I don't want to hijack the comp thread.

http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/t...25607348/m/781103883

Cheers

Olly

ACME Racing
UNSW@ADFA

Thanks. Too lazy to hit the Search button.