Tire selection

[Sachin]

how do i select the right tire for my fsae car? what are the different criterias to look into before selecting one?

[Owen Thomas]

Availability, cost, performance - these are all major criterion with differing and often competing sub criteria. You will have to decide which are more important than the others based on your teams resources.

I do appreciate that you asked "how" to choose a tire instead of asking which one would simply be best. I'm guessing you're from an inexperienced team as well, so you may not have much knowledge of the competition. Here's some things to think about performance wise:

FSAE courses usually have the vehicle traction limited, not power limited. What does this mean for tire choice?
FSAE courses are often designed with a lot of transient areas, and not very much steady state. What would this mean?
How much your vehicle will weigh and how much load is transferred during cornering/braking will give you a ballpark of load difference between two tires.
You must use the same dry tires for each event. Some events are very short, one is very long.
How important is the weight of your wheels?

In addition, tire choice and suspension characteristics are very related. If your suspension is designed and you're now picking a tire, think about what your suspension does and try to compliment the choices you made. If you are designing a suspension and picking a tire at the same time, think about what goals you want to achieve with your system.

[Sachin]

Yes i am from an inexperienced team. the information was helpful..thanks a lot :)
Are there any book links or web pages that i can read which will be helpful for our team?

[Owen Thomas]

Are there any book links or web pages that i can read which will be helpful for our team?
Absolutely. You can find a thread "stickied" on this forum that has a great list of books, as well as some very insightful posts on how to approach the competition. There is also an astounding amount of useful information available on the interweb (Google) if you can narrow down what you are looking for.

[Phil O'Dendron]

Who are you Sachin? What University team do you represent? Which competition do you wish to enter? What research have you already done? Have you searched this forum for 'Tires' and/or 'Tyres'?

Once you have done all these things, you can construct a new, polite, sensible question that will show the forum members you are not just another lazy slob Indian who wants something for nothing!

Phil O'Dendron