Formula Student Expertise Wanted

[Caspian Burrell]

Hi there,

I am Caspian Burrell a 2nd year engineer at the University Of Leicester (UK) and I would like to enlist some Formula Student Experts to help our future project

First off a little background:

As Leicester has never entered Formula Student before, 4 fellow 2nd years and I asked our department and it has been decided that we will be entering the 2012/13 competition. The team will be made up of 4th year students choosing Formula Student as their 4th year project. Whilst the 2012/13 competition seems far away, from our minimal research it is quite clear that time is the resource that we will have least of throughout the competition. Therefore after our January exam period we have planned a meeting where we will hopefully be starting: sponsorship, deciding team members and structure, project outlining and designing.

I have myself read through the rules, big bird’s post about team structure and lapsim’s etc, and I feel that because none of us have done anything like this before we are a little out of our depth. Also Leicester does not have an automotive Engineering section within the department, so there is limited expertise within the staff.

I feel that while a lot of the information will be available to us via this forum and other means, that having a few experts who can guide us or give us their knowledge will help us save a huge amount of time and money which might be otherwise wasted following poor design plans or bad project management. I also think it will be crucial to have some expertise to help us if we are to really succeed in this competition in our first year.

So to you the experts:

Currently we would like to have as many options as possible with regards to expertise, so we welcome anyone with good Formula Student knowledge. We will be looking for anyone who can help with any or all of project management/outlining help, design help, analysis help and driving help.

We may be able to pay you for your expertise if our budget allows, obviously we would prefer someone who could give us their help for free, but realise this is unlikely. We will of course also give a mention to everyone who helps us on our website when it is setup.

If you are interested in helping us then please can you reply with your e-mail, a quick explanation of your expertise (how many years, who you worked with, what you did etc) how available you will be to come to Leicester (as in once a month or once a week etc) what areas you can help us with and anything else you think is relevant.

Please wait until at least January for a response, and thank you in advance for your help.

Caspian Burrell

[Caspian Burrell]

Hi there,

I am Caspian Burrell a 2nd year engineer at the University Of Leicester (UK) and I would like to enlist some Formula Student Experts to help our future project

First off a little background:

As Leicester has never entered Formula Student before, 4 fellow 2nd years and I asked our department and it has been decided that we will be entering the 2012/13 competition. The team will be made up of 4th year students choosing Formula Student as their 4th year project. Whilst the 2012/13 competition seems far away, from our minimal research it is quite clear that time is the resource that we will have least of throughout the competition. Therefore after our January exam period we have planned a meeting where we will hopefully be starting: sponsorship, deciding team members and structure, project outlining and designing.

I have myself read through the rules, big bird’s post about team structure and lapsim’s etc, and I feel that because none of us have done anything like this before we are a little out of our depth. Also Leicester does not have an automotive Engineering section within the department, so there is limited expertise within the staff.

I feel that while a lot of the information will be available to us via this forum and other means, that having a few experts who can guide us or give us their knowledge will help us save a huge amount of time and money which might be otherwise wasted following poor design plans or bad project management. I also think it will be crucial to have some expertise to help us if we are to really succeed in this competition in our first year.

So to you the experts:

Currently we would like to have as many options as possible with regards to expertise, so we welcome anyone with good Formula Student knowledge. We will be looking for anyone who can help with any or all of project management/outlining help, design help, analysis help and driving help.

We may be able to pay you for your expertise if our budget allows, obviously we would prefer someone who could give us their help for free, but realise this is unlikely. We will of course also give a mention to everyone who helps us on our website when it is setup.

If you are interested in helping us then please can you reply with your e-mail, a quick explanation of your expertise (how many years, who you worked with, what you did etc) how available you will be to come to Leicester (as in once a month or once a week etc) what areas you can help us with and anything else you think is relevant.

Please wait until at least January for a response, and thank you in advance for your help.

Caspian Burrell

[RollingCamel]

I'm really against it being a graduation project. If you go for it as a graduation project try recruiting younger members too, you need to plan for team continuity.

[Caspian Burrell]

I totally agree, we tried to persuade the department to do it a different way. They said that it would be the easiest way to organise it within the department though.

[ed_pratt]

Right, rather than the usual search here, search there posts, i will attempt to explain a few things.

Firstly, you need to get to a reasonable knowledge level with your vehicle dynamics. Reading Race Car Vehicle Dynamics/Fundamentals of Vehicle Dynamics will help but won't give you the route to design a vehicle.

Secondly, may I suggest that you read the Cooper Union SAE paper on suspension design - I can say that it is without a doubt, the best paper on suspension design for beginners that I have ever read.

Thirdly, as you have already read Geoff's (Big Bird)posts, act upon them. A good starting point might be even more simple than he suggests. A metre by metre approach (see jersey tom's F1000 blog) can yield some seriously interesting results. they should help you to decide a design philosophy or approach.

That overall approach should drive the detail design for suspension/chassis/driver environment etc.. and give you a point to progress from.

The final year project is not ideal as you have recognised, but many teams here make it work for them. What you must realise is that what is required for the FYP is not what is required for an FSAE vehicle, and that you must tailor your report/designs for each area.

Finally, the biggest problem you have now is working through the vast amount of information available on the subject. The basic books are your starting point;

<UL TYPE=SQUARE>Race Car Vehicle Dynamics
Fundamentals of Vehicle Dynamics
All of the Carol Smith Books
Winterbourne's two engine books

[/list]

Use this forum to ask questions based on research rather than as a first port of call.

all the best

Ed

[Howy76]

Caspian,

You'd be more than welcome to visit the team at Hertfordshire, we're by J3 of the A1. You can contact me on racing @ herts . ac. uk

Kind regards,

Howard

[df_fsmb]

Really good for you to start early, but take care: I think you should work on the project all of the time, even if you now have a lot of time. Because if team members don't have anything to do for a few months, they could lose interest. This is the only problem at starting so early before the first competition. It should not be a problem if there is a united will to do it that way, but I am saying it just to remind you to look at absolutely every aspect of the problem.

[Charlie]

First off I applaud you for seeking advice and understanding that this is a big project.

However your appeal is very concerning. This is a student project. Advice is great, but it's the students that need to do the work and learn. A new team is a vast challenge but it's been done several hundreds of times, you are not a unique case in that respect.

Getting outside help to regularly advise your project is not in the spirit of the competition. PAYING someone to assist is quite possible against the rules.

15 years ago there was 1% of the information available and teams still started up and had success. You can do it. Don't seek 'professional' help, that's not what FSAE is all about.

[RollingCamel]

FSAE for me was a graduation project. I started 2009 at about this time, although I've been reading automotive books, Chassis Engineering Principles mainly, on my own since the beginning of the school year and entered FSG 2010 with ZeRustMachine.

Since you are in the UK, I would recommend you join FS UK 2011 at least as Class 2. It wouldn't be competitive but you'll learn from your own mistakes and other teams. Then for 2012 or 2013 you will have a clear idea about what you have to do and what you need. Ofcourse, you have the advantage that you are living in the UK and other teams exist already. We had to do it on our own, well thanks for the great support of the forum and it's search button, so we didn't have a clear benchmark.

As for reading I'm against Race car vehicle dynamics to be up the list. It is bombarding for someone with little background, you can read about the fundamental parts of it at first (suspension types, diffs, and etc), but its vehicle dynamics is hard to swallow at 1st. Fundamentals of Vehicle Dynamics and Carrol Smith books would be a good start.

PS. Check the 'Newbees' thread for Pat's advice for newbies and his column at FSG website, great stuff.

[Caspian Burrell]

Thank you all for your great responses, I will try and bear them all in mind.

As for the spirit and rules of the competition, I was under the opinion that your staff within the university are allowed to advise you as much as they like but can't help with the actual design and manufacturing. Wouldn't the same therefore apply to any visiting professor or expert?

Thanks again for your responses, looks like I need to get reading.

Cas

[flavorPacket]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Caspian Burrell:
As for the spirit and rules of the competition, I was under the opinion that your staff within the university are allowed to advise you as much as they like but can't help with the actual design and manufacturing. Wouldn't the same therefore apply to any visiting professor or expert? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Virtually none of the top Formula Student teams take much advice from faculty. They figure stuff out on their own, and in doing so become much more resourceful and self-directed engineers.

A great example of this approach can be found at San Jose State University. They are a 2nd year team that would have finished in the top 5 at FSAE West if they hadn't broken a rod end in the endurance. They do not have a lot of money, or very talented drivers, or professional help. What they do have is a good team atmosphere and the drive to learn from whatever source they can. For example, they sent team members to FSG and MIS to speak with the top teams, they ask for tours of top teams' shops, and they ask design judges to visit their shop or really heavily critique their car.

As a professional who used to be a FSAE team leader and driver, let me assure you that nobody knows more about FSAE cars than students. I think you've come to the right place to ask your questions, but please be aware that very few of the top teams are active on the forums. You'll need to go to a competition or ask for a shop tour to really learn from these teams.

[Crispy]

As stated in posts above, talking with other students and design judges is very valuable and several conversations our team has had with judges over the years have significantly influenced our way of designing and building our cars. If you can bring in experienced people and have these kinds of conversations several times throughout your design phase I would say go for it, especially as an inexperienced team.

Spending an hour or two discussing trade offs with someone with experience will at worst force you to organize and communicate your thoughts to a third party. At best it could save you a lot of time, or open your eyes to something major you have missed that could have killed the design completely.

I think working with professionals is a good idea and is well within the spirit of the rules as long as they are not actively designing the car. Whatever feedback you get, you still have to filter it through your own engineering judgement and decide what is important.

[RollingCamel]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Caspian Burrell:
Thank you all for your great responses, I will try and bear them all in mind.

As for the spirit and rules of the competition, I was under the opinion that your staff within the university are allowed to advise you as much as they like but can't help with the actual design and manufacturing. Wouldn't the same therefore apply to any visiting professor or expert?

Thanks again for your responses, looks like I need to get reading.

Cas </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

You can get general engineering or non-engineering advice from anyone. As for the faculty, it rarely had anything to do with us except that we are forced to have an adviser, a scumbag, so we could receive our sponsorships. Anyways, students are supposed to be self dependent in their research.

Btw, if the university isn't offering any real support you don't need to be bound by what they say about being a graduation project. Try have a talk with them and explain the nature of the competition and the teams.

[Bemo]

I'd also suggest to go to competitions and also to visit other teams. Normally everybody is willing to show you his shop and to explain the organiational concept of their team. If it comes to the technical aspects. Have a look on actual FSAE cars and try to figure out, why they are designed the way they are. Also ask team members about the philosophy and design of their car. Obviously they won't tell you all their little secrets, but again normally everybody is willing to share quite a lot.

At the moment I'd say that your most important task is to set up a team organisation. Alsovery important is to set clear goals and a detailed schedule. Plan from the first competition backwards and set yourself deadlines. You will get into big trouble if you don't have a clear design freeze. At a certain point you MUST stop trying to optimise and start do build the car.

And that's the point about using it as a graduation program. If you want to achieve as many points at comp as possible you will have to build a very simple car in the beginning as you will have quite a lot to do just to get it running. But as graduation projects people usually want to do something high sofisticated.
That's the conflict you are going to have. And that's why setting goals in the beginning is so important. Make sure everybody understands and accepts these goals.
Our goals are finish the car in time - finish endurance - win
That means that we avoid developing complex systems if we don't believe they are helping us to achieve these goals.
If your goal is to make it possible for students to have fancy graduation projects, that's ok. But you mustn't be disappointed if you don't score very high at comp, because it was not your first goal.

And as already mentioned after building a team you must start right away and make sure that people start working. Otherwise no team spirit can develop and that's definitely very important.

So much for today. If you have further questions feel free to ask. This time of year everybody should have enough time to answer ;-)

BTW in our team I belonged to the carbon fibre guys in 08 and in 09 I was one of the team captains and was responsible for sponsoring. And in 2010 I was the only carbon fibre guy in the electric time...

[Caspian Burrell]

Cheers for all the advice again,

Everyone seems to be saying the same things such as organisation and visiting other teams will help, so we will obviously take these well into account and try to make best use of them.

Therefore if any midlands teams in the UK would be kind enough to let us view their garage sometime in the next calendar year then drop me a post or e-mail please.

Otherwise the more advice the better, so keep it coming.

Thanks again,

Cas

[Chris Craig]

Your more than welcome to come and have a look around our workshop in Loughborough

Just drop me an e-mail on ttcjc@lboro.ac.uk in the new year (we have exams till the beginning of february so after then is fine)

We are kind of in the same boat as you with final year students working on the car for a semester as a group project, however the core team, and team that goes to the events are all doing the project extra curricular

[RollingCamel]

I just came by "The Automotive Chassis" Volume 1 by Genta, Giancarlo, Morello, L.

As roughly presented as it is, I found it very good for someone looking for the basics, covers what we need and well structured, from a mechanical engineering viewpoint.

Ofcourse, there is no certain book or paper to read. You'll read tons of information but this book is a good start at chassis engineering.