New Rules Changes for FSG

[_J_]

Tobias Michaels has announced new rules changes for 2014 Formula Student Germany on twitter.

[Markus]

"Devices generating downforce must not be attached to suspension components."

Had to double check, it's not the first of April and I'm not on drugs. Are they serious?

[SNasello]

Thats not the only one.

"No parts of the car are allowed to be higher than the main roll hoop"

According to what I have read, this is for 'Safety' in the case of rear wings flying off, and for EVs for visibility of the Tractive System Light, although this is already covered by another rule.

[TMichaels]

Just take a look at the F1 cars of 1969 and the resulting accidents and think by yourself, whether these two rules make sense or not.

[jd74914]

I can understand the unsprung aero rule, but I am having a problem seeing how limiting wing elevation increases safety.

[stayflatandkeepturning]

Just take a look at the F1 cars of 1969 and the resulting accidents and think by yourself, whether these two rules make sense or not.

First that was 44 years ago, we have learned why it happened, how to prevent it and such. Since then materials and simulations have progressed so we can now predict better what will happend.

Second, FSAE is not F1, Not even close no matter how much we wish it was, loads and speeds are much lower in fsae.

also the accidents your talking about were a result of the graham hill lotus ( basically wings on sticks attached to upright)

[Markus]

If everything that can potentionally cause an accident is forbidden will there be much left to do?

Formula 1 has a great record of things causing accidents: tires, brakes, uprights, wishbones, engines, track workers with extinguishers etc...

What I mean is that there can be safe and effective unsprung aero. Now it's all forbidden for the sake of mistakes made decades ago. There must be a way to control it in a less-restrictive way?

I do understand the height-rule though. One day at the sauna we were joking about a sprint-style wing on top of the car (would have been sprung though)... ;)

[Flight909]

Another design constraint, another optimization parameter.

CGz vs. aero (aka. How high can we make the roll hoop)

Attach aero to rocker, problem solved, loads goes straight to tire...

Not sure what the big upset is.

[Claude Rouelle]

That was 1969..... There is tech and even after that design judging to spot design or manufacturing weakness.

Honestly I have nothing against aero attached to uprights. I have seen tons if issues with front and rear wings mountings on chassis too in FSAE / FS as well as in pro racing. It is in fact a very good engineering exercise.

But I go to FS / FSAE to have fun so I do not feel it as a big deal. I think this is minor debate.

In fact, if we really want to go this way then we should ban most of aero devices; these are mostly irrelevant to the automotive industry, compared to (just to give 2 examples) electrical power and torque vectoring: THEsE are relevant.

[stayflatandkeepturning]

Claude how are aero devices irrelevant to the auto industry. Id say that aero is now more relivent than ever with companies trying to reduce drag for fuel economy, sports cars using aero to reduce axel lift off and if we call motorsports the auto industy then aero is hugely important with respect to vehicle performance.

[JulianH]

I think both rules are correct. We saw really dangerous wings last year that just had to fail due to the suspension movements.. I know Monash is doing it for over a decade without major problems, but you always have to consider what unexpierenced teams would do.
The height of the rear wing will limit the effect of Aero but I think it's a good way to keep it alive and for the teams to make a engineering decision if they take the problematic higher MRH.

The bad thing about the rules is that Germany is doing them "on their own" and that they come within the new two-year cycle of rules. Yes, they can be safety relevant, but if that's so, every competition should use this rule. It once again is a problem for the Australian teams (Monash 2014 like ECU for FS UK 2013 with the Percy-legs)...

Claude, I have to disagree with your last point. Aerodynamics are not irrelevant in Automotive Industry. I just started my internship at a German OEM and they have tons of people working on Aerodynamics. Maybe not huge-ass FSAE Style wings, but drag reduction, stability and most of all internal aerodynamics are quite relevant. Torque Vectoring isn't that much. Maybe for some hypercars (here the Aero is relevant too...). Electric motors of course. Hybrid strategy, and so on.
But in the end FSAE is not only for the Automotive Industry. Aircrafts have Aero, Wind power plants have Aero... It may not be the same, but the effects and the methods are comparable from what I've seen in 6 weeks..

[TMichaels]

First that was 44 years ago, we have learned why it happened, how to prevent it and such. Since then materials and simulations have progressed so we can now predict better what will happend.

Second, FSAE is not F1, Not even close no matter how much we wish it was, loads and speeds are much lower in fsae.

also the accidents your talking about were a result of the graham hill lotus ( basically wings on sticks attached to upright)

If the standards have raised so much, then I would like to hear, why we still see cars with catastrophic suspension failures in brake test or at least three cars per competition burst in flames?

I do not argue that good teams can easily make it work safe. But the rules need to cover all possibilities and that includes bad decisions by team project management, tired student assembling glued carbon fibre parts and overestimation of the own abilities.

It sounds harsh, but if you have ever spend a day in scrutineering at the "other" side, you would better understand what I am talking about.

I don't know whether you have seen the wobbly wing fail at FSUK this year, but that was scary.

[TMichaels]

I think both rules are correct. We saw really dangerous wings last year that just had to fail due to the suspension movements.. I know Monash is doing it for over a decade without major problems, but you always have to consider what unexpierenced teams would do.
The height of the rear wing will limit the effect of Aero but I think it's a good way to keep it alive and for the teams to make a engineering decision if they take the problematic higher MRH.

The bad thing about the rules is that Germany is doing them "on their own" and that they come within the new two-year cycle of rules. Yes, they can be safety relevant, but if that's so, every competition should use this rule. It once again is a problem for the Australian teams (Monash 2014 like ECU for FS UK 2013 with the Percy-legs)...

Claude, I have to disagree with your last point. Aerodynamics are not irrelevant in Automotive Industry. I just started my internship at a German OEM and they have tons of people working on Aerodynamics. Maybe not huge-ass FSAE Style wings, but drag reduction, stability and most of all internal aerodynamics are quite relevant. Torque Vectoring isn't that much. Maybe for some hypercars (here the Aero is relevant too...). Electric motors of course. Hybrid strategy, and so on.
But in the end FSAE is not only for the Automotive Industry. Aircrafts have Aero, Wind power plants have Aero... It may not be the same, but the effects and the methods are comparable from what I've seen in 6 weeks..

Some Aero teams might feel personally attacked, but the intention is not to ban or restrict aero. I know of only one team mounting aero to unsprung mass at FSG for example, so the effect on most of the teams will probably be minor. Although I do not know what is/was in the planning for the next season.

The max height rule is driven by safety. It was hard to check the TSAL visibility as defined in the rules and also missed by quite some teams. Additionally we had to check many cars prior entering the specific dynamic events. If we had done this after the run, some teams would have lost it. The rule makes this check easier and also increases visibility of the TSAL.
The second point is mechanic safety. We have seen wings fail in the past. With the "standard" mounting of the wings and them becoming higher and higher, the likeliness increases that during braking they would snap over and hit the driver by rotating around the MRH. I also know some track marshals who had close encounters with failing wings. Now imagine those wings to be at head height...
.
Regarding building higher MRH's. Yes, that will work, but also consider the minimum height and angle of the braces. Cars with a very high MRH will probably be longer and weigh more due to the additional tubing/structure in the rear to support the braces.

[Pippo69]

Tobias, you are talking about cars burst in flames. Don't you think this is a much bigger safety issue then the rear wing mounting? A rule like for the head restraint, saying the Wings have to withstand xy Newtons in every direction would be a better solution and it could be tested during the tech inspection or with something similar to the Impact Attenuator or the SEF/SES.
But ok, the rules are the same challenge for everyone, except the teams from overseas. It is a pitty for teams like Monash, because they already finished to built their car and it is not complying with both rules. I would have loved to see them with their awesome car at FSG, but i don't think they will rework the car so much. I also don't think that we will see so many teams from overseas at FSG as in the past. It will be intersting if FSG is the only event with these rules.

[Claude Rouelle]

JulianH

"Maybe not huge-ass FSAE Style wings" That is exactly what I meant. But I did not mean that aero is not important even for cars at 120 km/h. My post was just too short. Remember the effect of the missing little rear spoiler on one of the first version of the Audi TT. And I am with you about aero yaw yaw moment / stability. I have been told that if you throw a BMW from an airplane it will go straight while some other cars will roll-pitch-yaw indefinitely and inconsistently.

[Xfsae]

What is the safety issue with aero attached to uprights or UWA 2012 type cars for the matter? (no connection with them)
As a working engineer with great love for the Formula SAE competition (taught me a lot) I have to express my worries about banning things so easily. If you are worried about the safety of something you can put the team through more lengthy procedures of proving the safety with simulation, tests of the finished item (videos ,photos, drawings can be sent to the committee until specific dates) and if deemed critical and very serious for safety why not demand that an FSAE scrutinee be payed totally through the team's budget to visit the team and see themshelves the tests-this is how its done in real world also if for example the main spar of a plane must be tested. Let's say in the case of a car like the UWA 2012 (again no affiliation at all with them),someone from the FSAE-A committee can visit them (at the expense of the team or a sponsorship from an organization like SAE) see the tests and even drive the car themshelves to assure some minimal levels of safety.
You can even demand that the team who has committed itself to an innovative technology perform a specific test before entering the dynamic events -lets say attach a beam of specific length to an undertray and have 3 people stand on the edge of the beam to prove its strength in a specific type of loading that has been deemed as lower safety limit by the scrutineering committee It is just not right to ban or restrict to the point that it is no longer logical or profitable to adopt a whole branch of technology. You need to encourage people who want to do something innovative to do it - it is part of their education and building of character
If you are worried about wing mounts force the teams to perform a test before they enter the dynamic events . Have for example bags of sand or some other simple kind of adjustable weight that can be used for many types of tests and require from the team to load it on the wing (on a jig that they must have prepared) before each entry in the track - at least most of the chances that it can be broken by really bad design will be eliminated - apart from that even a conventional wishbone ,rod end ,or Keizer wheel can break ....

As someone else said here aerodynamic is not only about big "awful" wings which i personally love but also rotating components such as fans, or other type of impellers and even boundary layer sucking devices or totally innovative ways to create lift ( or downforce in the FSAE case) by a vast variety of rotating , reciprocating or moving devices- take a look at google patents and you will be shocked how many things like that exist , a lot of which can be developed into commercial applications that can change the life of millions (imagine the status of Formula SAE when people here that a big idea was first implemented there... suddenly industry takes more notice instead of starting to look people who have been involved in FSAE as something standard and not so special anymore) .
I am worried we are producing Phd/MSc level thermodynamics/aerospace engineers claiming that they can do extremely complex calculations on propeller tip losses but they have never designed any form of impeller from scratch before because noone asked them to , so they cannot even control the inputs that someone might give them for Prandtl losses for example which might be wrong to start with...Remember that in the first World War a simple layman could design(yes i mean specify all angles, airfoils and chord lengths etc) and build a complete propeller for fighter aircraft because propellers were damaged by bullets in the air battles far away from the manufacturer. Those laymen were people with no degrees at all and they were not just laying up a prop in a mold ... they were calculating and creating each prop: paper & pencil ,several pages of calculations, slide rule and wood sculpturing style....
I was reading those days how Chapparal proved everyone wrong about their worries of what happens when vaccum is lost on the 2J sucker car in a corner- they just proved that the whole damn thing is a huge vac box so even if you are in a corner you still have enough time to get out of it before all vacuum is lost plus they had vacuum indicators in the cockpit to warn of loss of vacuum .... Basically the same thing that you can see in the industrial vacuum forming process except noone had connected the 2 before...Funny thing is that an SCCA official was the first one to see and agree the car was actually safe
There is a way around everything , banning search of knowledge like is a very worrying sign for the future of all of us as mankind...
Remember people were depending on only one engine that has not been ever tested before in its life to leave the surface of the moon after each time they were there...If anything on this engine was less than optimum people were stranded there.... And all this was done by engineers who have not done anything like that before and had an average age of 28... in the mid to late 60s, only 15 years after anyone had ridden on anything with a rocket before (He176/Me163 times for our German engineer friends here)

Excuse me for the long post , all i wrote is with great love to Formula SAE & without disregard to its educational value so far.

[Z]

Dear Students,


By Tobias;
Just take a look at the F1 cars of 1969 and the resulting accidents and think by yourself, whether these two rules make sense or not
...
the intention is not to ban or restrict aero...
...
The max height rule is driven by safety.
...
The second point is mechanic safety. We have seen wings fail in the past. ... likeliness increases that during braking they would snap over and hit the driver...
...
Blah, blah, blah...

Remember that tyrannies always start with someone telling you "THIS IS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!"
~~~o0o~~~

Some detailed issues:

"Devices generating downforce must not be attached to suspension components."

Is there any DEFINITION of what constitutes "suspension components"? (Hint: A suspensionless car still needs "uprights" to carry its axles, so "uprights" CANNOT be "suspension components". Or not?)

What constitutes a "device generating downforce"? (Hint: Rotating wheels generate downforce!!!)

So, as a test case, was UWA-2012's undertray "attached to suspension components"?

And, more to the point, would banning it make it any safer!!!!!???

I sense many meaningless, long-winded arguments during scrutineering. And many very disappointed students, who potentially might have become very good engineers, if they were not so discouraged.
~~~o0o~~~

Bottom line, I strongly suggest that any teams who disagree with these FSG changes should make their views very clearly heard to the FSG committee, and also to the wider FSAE community. If the above rules stay, then I strongly suggest boycotting FSG. There are plenty of other comps in Europe, and around the world!

Z

[Kevin Hayward]

With one small change we see one opportunity that was unique to FSAE start to die. The idea of comparing 1969 F1 to current FSAE is flawed. We should aim to keep these options in the rules safely, and not take the easy way of banning it. If you are worried about carbon bonding of tubes, specify Ferrous materials. The ability to chase concepts is more important than the details.

The wing / roll hoop height issue definitely has more importance, and I would agree that it is probably a good idea. This is despite currently being involved with a big wing team.

The much bigger issue is that we should have consistent rules between comps that are announced much earlier and/or a grandfathering clause. I don't know of any team that appreciates this fragmentation.

Kev

[Charles Kaneb]

Well, shoot, that's disappointing.

Banning unsprung aero closes off an interesting and underexplored area of vehicle improvement.

Without it, the aero has to roll with the chassis, just like every other limited-known-performance, expensive, precision-dominated car out there. The Hoosier LC0 tires alone give you .3 deg/g, so at 2 g and roughly 57" overall underbody width you have to operate 2 g * .3 deg/g * 57" width * (1 rad/57 deg) = .6" off the ground at the outer edge, plus the clearance you need for bumps and warp.

With the right setup you could have made active control, even active suspension worthwhile.

IndyCar is a spec series. FSAE is the only series I know of where tunnel development is currently going on outside of very restricted rules. Nobody will pay the vision, weight, and drag penalties of visible wings on road cars, so downforce improvements in road cars have to come from the underbody. It would be really nice to be able to look at others' solutions for getting both decent downforce and road clearance.

With the aero rules as they are in the rest of the world, FSAE cars would be within 3 years of passing the A-Mods for once and for all and being the fastest autocross cars in the world. Start restricting performance and they'll be back in range of a shifter kart again. Unlike FSAE they're still developing new tires for shifter karts.

To my knowledge, there hasn't been a big wreck caused by a bad unsprung aero mount yet. Meanwhile, we've still got obvious areas for safety improvement elsewhere. Badly injuring a driver in a fuel fire hasn't been acceptable in any other series since before I was born. In my opinion it's the one thing that needs to change in FSAE. I can complain about the design and cost rules all I want but to some extent that's sour grapes about my own team's limitations and my own poor performance - but the fire-safety rules are significantly inferior to those at LeMons.

1) IC2 does not contain a rule that requires fuel tanks to be pressure tested, to be impact-resistant (IC2.5.2 just says that they have to be shielded from impacts - they can tear loose and scrape on the ground etc in an impact), or to even be of generally safe construction. As it is I can use an unmodified go-kart tank*, or have some freshman teammate weld one together from scrap aluminum sheet, or reweld the cracked tank from last year**, and pass tech.

2) IC2.5 constrains the fuel system within an envelope that goes from the tires to the top of the roll hoop. Sometimes it doesn't even take an impact to lose a tire on these cars. I recommend adopting Texas A&M's rule that the fuel system be entirely contained within the roll structure. While a tech inspector should catch a drain system for IC2.4.5 that hangs down below any worthwile protection (one unsupported 1/2"x.02thin" tube running across the bottom of the tank doesn't count - if you can grab it by hand and rip it out, what's the ground going to do in a big wreck?) it's an inspector's judgement call that shouldn't be.

3) T4.3.2 requires a 1" separation between the exhaust system and the driver's compartment to reduce convective heat transfer to the driver. I recommend implementing a similar rule requiring isolation of the fuel tank from the exhaust pipe. There was an incident involving a cheapo homebuilt exhaust system in a BMW E30 LeMons car that caused a pit fire a few years ago.

4) T14.14.4 encourages an onboard fire extinguisher system. However, I did not see many (any?) at Lincoln last year. There is a performance disadvantage to running one. I recommend rewriting that rule as "As a team option, commercially available onboard fire extinguisher systems are encouraged as an alternative to the extinguisher that accompanies the vehicle. Teams without such a system installed to the manufacturer's instructions shall securely mount a steel plate 3/8" thick with an area of at least 100 square inches *** immediately behind the impact attenuator anti-intrusion plate." The University of North Dakota used a Purple Patch Racing Firecharger system. It's currently not legal (AFFF banned by T14.4.1), costs ~$500, weighs ~10 lbs.

5) T14.3 should be amended to require the balaclava to cover the driver's face and fit tightly around the eye sockets.

6) T14.2 allows motorcycle helmets. They're not fireproof for a good reason (very few materials are both fireproof and abrasion-resistant). I recommend at least encouraging the use of an SA helmet.

* A brand-new plastic tank from a decent brand (CRG, Freeline, Kartech) will survive at least 30 hours in a more difficult environment than ours. That tin can you bought on eKartingNews for twenty bucks, on the other hand...
** If it cracked in one area, it's between 90% and 110% of the expected fatigue life in other areas of the part in a similar state of stress.
*** That's 38 cubic inches of steel, or approximately 10 lbs.

[JWard]

I must admit I agree. The wording is very limiting for very little safety gain. Mostly it's rear / front wing mounted to components that take heavy shock loads, i.e. mounted to the upright, the a-arm (specifically near the interface to the upright), or push / pull rod's. I think either wording it better or scrut test for strength of mounting, specifying tolerances of mountings for these devices (ID / OD of elements bonded together) or simply specifying no carbon materials as per Z's suggestions would maximise the safety factor created for a minimal disturbance in the innovation allowed by the ruleset!

(I hope UWA's car is lightning quick in December, so that more teams push to allow them to pursue direct acting underbody aero)

[Flight909]

What is the largest forces acting on the suspension coming from? (I wonder if the FSG technical commitee know this?)

I think one good way to improve safety would be to disallow this forces, because they maybe makes the suspension fail.

Should make for a good competition ... not!

[max_ger]

I was at a workshop, where these changes where discussed. It was a bit reading between the lines, but I think the FSG-guys try to decrease the ammount of paperwork to go through before an event, to keep the high number of starter slots up. Last year they had to read 60.000 pages of various documents prior to the event. My guess is: Adding a SES-like document for "whobble wings" would simply be too much to handle.

[Canuck Racing]

I also know some track marshals who had close encounters with failing wings. Now imagine those wings to be at head height...

I think we all know one marshal who likes to frequently remind us of being hit by a stray tire. Perhaps FSG should look into better and safer marshal stands and spectator areas instead?

I know this past year at Michigan a car careened directly into the water barriers at the start/finish line where multiple marshals, students, volunteers and safety personal were gathered and absolutely nothing happened (other than they DNF'd.)

[bob.paasch]

Some Aero teams might feel personally attacked, but the intention is not to ban or restrict aero. I know of only one team mounting aero to unsprung mass at FSG for example, so the effect on most of the teams will probably be minor. Although I do not know what is/was in the planning for the next season.


The FSG Rules Committee has just made the fastest car at FSG13 illegal. Of course we feel attacked. How can you say the intention is not to restrict aero when that is EXACTLY what the FSG rules committee has done.

And of course GFR has developed unsprung aero, our simulations show it will make our car faster. Testing will show if it will go on the car for Michigan.



The max height rule is driven by safety. It was hard to check the TSAL visibility as defined in the rules and also missed by quite some teams. Additionally we had to check many cars prior entering the specific dynamic events. If we had done this after the run, some teams would have lost it. The rule makes this check easier and also increases visibility of the TSAL.


There is already a rule that covers visibility of the TSAL. What was needed was a specific test method that the teams could easily duplicate.



The second point is mechanic safety. We have seen wings fail in the past. With the "standard" mounting of the wings and them becoming higher and higher, the likeliness increases that during braking they would snap over and hit the driver by rotating around the MRH. I also know some track marshals who had close encounters with failing wings. Now imagine those wings to be at head height....


"...during braking they would snap over and hit the driver..." Has this ever happened? No.

As for unsprung aero, we have seen suspension failures without any aero at all, so what makes you think banning unsprung aero will be safer? Depending on the design, there could very easily be higher suspension loads with sprung aero than with unsprung.



Regarding building higher MRH's. Yes, that will work, but also consider the minimum height and angle of the braces. Cars with a very high MRH will probably be longer and weigh more due to the additional tubing/structure in the rear to support the braces.

The real travesty of this FSG-only rule change is the timing. If this was such a huge safety issue that it had to be addressed on the off-cycle rule change year, then why wasn't this included in the 2014 FSAE Rules released months ago? Announcing this rule change in November when the Australian cars are already built and the North American cars are very close to or past their design freeze gives an advantage to the European cars that start their year in July or August. Or was that your intention?

[theTTshark]

Yeah this really sucks. We just had our design freeze, and now we get told that wings above the roll hoop are going to be illegal at Germany when we planned on going for our first time. We've ran wings above the roll hoop since 2009 and on development cars 1-2 years before 09. We've never once had a wing hit someone while braking or at anytime for that matter. The drag force is so great on a rear wing, even if it breaks during braking it is still doing to slow much faster than the car.

Here's a list of bigger issues we have with the safety rules currently:
NUMBER 1: The biggest thing that FSAE has yet to do is having an onboard fire suppression systems as a standard part. More people have gotten hurt from fire related accidents than any other type of accident if I had to guess. Like others have said, even the Chump Car/Lemons series require fire suppression systems! Why aren't these mandated yet?! The lack of this rule is ridiculous and shows a complete lack of direction in terms of making FSAE/FStudent safer.

2: Why aren't we required to wears Hans Devices yet? We have to have dozens of "unintended acceleration" devices on Ecars, and Ccars can't run fly by wire because of that. So clearly we're worried about crashes and preventing them. But why aren't we concerned about protecting a driver when they do crash? There are water barriers as part of the track limits at some competitions, and at Michigan you're not that far away from the wall. Yet again we are the only series to not require such devices.

The two easiest solutions to making a car/driver safety are completely ignored while a single competition (Germany) is going to claim that rear wings are the single biggest threat to the health of individuals at FSAE events? I have to agree with Bob. This seems like a direct attack on teams that are utilizing aerodynamics to make their cars faster. In order to make the packaging work with the new rules we would have to completely redesign our aerodynamic package for a single event! And so far I have yet to hear reasonable decisions as to why this rule is changing. Claiming that something needs to be changed to increase the safety of those at competitions while other larger and more dangerous systems are still allowed to go unchecked shows to me that there are other reasons why this change is happening.

My views do not reflect those of Jayhawk Motorsports or the University of Kansas.

[Trevor]

I agree with the previously expressed statements that these rules do a poor job addressing the real safety concerns of FS/FSAE and artificially restrict vehicle design in unnecessary ways.

What is additionally bothersome is that FSG was not very clear in communicating this to teams around the world. If you go to the Formula Student Germany webpage: https://www.formulastudent.de/ or the 2014 Formula Student Electric rules: https://www.formulastudent.de/uploads/media/FSE_Rules_2014_v1.0.0.pdf (Combustion rules are not released yet) there is no indication of these changes. Google searching "2014 Formula Student Germany rules" or "2014 FSG rules" brings up no mention of these changes either. At GFR we only heard about this because we had teammembers at the workshop, and we can see Tobias Michaels has been nice enough to post the changes to Twitter. What was the official plan here to release these changes? Any team planning to attend FSG that was not at this workshop in Germany would have no idea of these major changes unless they had been posted to the world here on the FSAE.com forums. How can the organization hold students to rules which are not even announced officially? Is it expected that every team competing at FSG use the informal social media channels to get up to date info which directly influences major vehicle design choices?

We are always told as students that FSAE is a project management competition. IMO it really ruins the lesson when changes are made this late. This is very much "Do as I say, not as I do". Ultimately I'm just very disappointed, FSG has worked very hard in the past to make their competition the best run in the world moves like this really invalidate that effort.

[tromoly]

Food for thought, here's two cars that have the highest wing mounting that I know of.

Monash
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v245/Brootal/FSAE-A%202011/ECUR11SAE_1257.jpg

GFR
http://www.global-formula-racing.com/images/8745346380_8299125c52_c.jpg


Looking at both cars, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the leading edge of the lower elements on both cars look to be lower than the top of the MHR. And with the mountings extending from the roll hoop back to the wing, in the case of the other mounts breaking wouldn't these links cause the wing to have a moment rotating the wing backwards away from the driver?

[MegaDeath]

.The second point is mechanic safety. We have seen wings fail in the past. With the "standard" mounting of the wings and them becoming higher and higher, the likeliness increases that during braking they would snap over and hit the driver by rotating around the MRH.

So you're saying that there is no force from the air acting in the reward direction preventing the wing from rotating forward? Maybe if there was a gale force tail wind and the car was stationary, then you might be right.

As someone who had be in the driver seat while rear wing mounting has failed, I can tell you that the wing just kinda flops around and makes the car handle funny for a few corners until someone realizes the problem and tells you to stop. And yes, this was a circumstance where the ream mounts had failed and the wing was free to potentially rotate forward and clunk me in the head, however it did not. You sound like a university Health and safety official coming up with a ridiculous 1 in 90,000,000 situation and trying to make it sound like a real danger.

And for the other point of not allowing aero mounted to the suspension; if that were in fact a case of trying to protect track workers, why not make every car run the same solid wheel center and hub as to reduce the possibility of a wheel flying off due to failure? While your'e at it why not ban carbon a-amrs and push/pull rods? I'm sure in the past 5 years of F-SAE/Student there have been over 100 instances where those have failed and led to the driver losing control (3 on my team, and we haven't used carbon suspension since May 2010). Is that not a danger to track workers? Again, as someone who has been driving a car when carbon suspension has failed, I would say that this scenario is much more likely to happen or has happened. So why is there no ban coming on that? And hell, why not tell TU Graz they are never allowed to use flex-plates for inboard suspension mounting? Those have broken too!!

[Kevin Hayward]

Monash is a good example as they have run suspension mounted big wings since 2002. In one of the comps they have had a rear wing failure, it changed the balance of the car, which was still capable of driving. They have also caught on fire at comp. In that case the driver was in serious danger and drove for quite a distance before being stopped.

From other cars I have seen numerous suspension failures and lots of fires, none of which had anything to do with aero. I have seen wheels fly off towards the crowd (more than once), and even seen a FSAE vehicle roll over at comp despite passing the tilt test. These rule changes would have done nothing.

The rules allow quite a lot of unsafe practices, and due to the high focus on weight in the design tent I would go as far to say they encourage them. Put a decent firewall and a fair bit of space between exhaust and the fuel tank and you recieve a design points hit for higher mass, and a slight performance decrease. What about the weight of ferrous suspension components over carbon? In the case of accidents and side intrusion most monocoque teams are okay, but the spaceframe teams with low side intrusion bars have easily penetrated sides. Course design leads to teams building towards low track and wheelbase, increasing instability and the chance of rollover. The latter much more important in recent years. Why do we allow feet forward of the front axle line. This was something I remember Carroll Smith saying would likely change as far back as 2000. To suggest that the primary reason behind these rules are safety based, when more legitimate concerns are raised and not dealt with appropriately, is disingenuous.

When the Aero rules were changed to what they have been for the last couple of years a number of people spoke out and said what it would mean for conceptual design and the large performance advantage winged teams were getting. These comments were ignored, and ridiculed by a number of teams. Now the proof has come out this is a definite attempt to reduce this performance.

I don't see any reason why the performance shouldn't be reduced, or better yet that it shouldn't have been increased in the first place. Capping speed is one of the best ways to improve safety, and it is not the only place in the rules where limitations are made to speed. With Aero the height rule is one way, we could also go back to less area for the wings. The unsprung aero change is not well justified. It has a small affect on performance, but as mentioned previously all the loads whether unsprung or sprung go through some parts of the suspension.

Mainly what I think annoys the people of this community is that these changes are made rapidly and not uniformly between competitions. Then bullshit reasons are given to why they have implemented. It was crap when Australia kept doing it, and it is still crap if Germany does it.

Kev

[Mbirt]

Other competitions are waiting take your registration fees, gentlemen!

We'd love to have you attend FSAE-Lincoln at the world's best autocross facility in June if you're looking for a great international competition, but have big wings, suspension-mounted aero, or a fuel-efficient combustion powertrain and would rather not deal with combined combustion-electric scoring :)

[TMichaels]

First of all, I personally understand your frustration and I also totally agree that these changes came out very late.

I also agree with the points about fire being the most underestimated danger and not well covered in the rules. I personally argue since years about that, but my arguments were not heard until now.

Before I continue, just ask yourself one question and play it through in your minds: What if we had implemented a rule that requires an onboard fire suppression system or that makes HANS mandatory? There would be argueing about the cost, packaging, driver ergonomics, you name it. Same kind of posts, different topic.

However, this is not about other rules, this is about the FSG aero rules.

I am NOT a mechanical engineer. I am a sparkie, but I tried to tell my understanding of the reasons for these rules. I probably should not have tried that as I might have been wrong in many things, especially regarding the mechanical details. I must also add that all that I write is always my personal opinion and view on things and never an official statement of the FSAE or FSG rules committee. I will ask the "mechanical" guys of the FSG rules committee to provide more insight.

From here on, I will just interprete what I have read in the posts:

Restricting aero: Why is this bad at the first place? Bob and others for example argued that these rules restrict vehicle performance and going unsprung with aero would make the cars faster. Why make them faster? The educational aspect does not really benefit from that, in my opinion. Yes, aero is important in industry as well, but there is no difference for this aspect, IMHO, whether that aero is sprung or unsprung. You probably learn more, if it has to be sprung, because I can not think of another application in which unsprung aero is used/allowed, though this can totally be my fault.
Again: Why make them faster? It will lead to tighter courses, make the courses less fun to drive, just to keep the speeds rule compliant (although I understand that not every competition aims to have rule compliant track layouts). I currently can not see a disadvantage in the aero limiting effect of these rules.

Regarding the "That has never happened yet" writers:
I probably do not have to remind you that it is not that smart to wait for an accident to happen and then act on the cause. Otherwise I am happy to ask every motorcycle driver who has not been in a crash, why he would wear a helmet or why cars now have airbags. It worked fine without them in the past...I know, polemic, but so is the argument "that it has never happened before".

@Bob:
If you really think that we (FSG) aim to specifically restrict your team's performance than you should honestly think about it again. Because that would mean that you think that we are biased against single teams which means that we are not trustworthy. This is arrogant, but teams often overestimate their own visibility/importance when they try to switch their minds to "official view". I personally do often not even read the team/university name, when I am answering rules questions or applying penalties. It just doesn't matter. All teams are treated the same way.

Some things are also driven by organisational aspects: Many posts asked for a defined test or extra documents to be submitted instead of banning it right away. On the other hand most of you want a shorter rule book and fast scrutineering. Choose your weapon, but only one please! Either you want one or the other. I don't argue that there is much room for improvement with respect to "phrasing efficiency" in the rules, but this is not the point here.

The proposal to have a paid scrutineer visiting the teams is just rubbish. Sorry, but on one hand one of the main topics every year is team budget and about the rich and the poor. Now a "rich" team can afford to have a Scrutineer over and pay him/her. A "poor" team instead might have a way better solution, but cannot afford the scrutineer and thus must compete without. I think some people forget that despite very few people all of us are unpaid volunteers. We have a real job. We do this in our free time and I think it will be hard to find enough people to travel around and visit every single team. From a team's viewpoint most of them time the view only consists of that single team. But in real life, we are dealing with 115 teams. Now think what would happen, if each of them would need a scrutineer to check their aero. You might argue that this is unlikely and that might be true. However, no team would accept not being able to run, because no scrutineer is left to check their aero prior comp.

The last thing I am wondering about:
There seems to be a huge interest in this topic, but I have not seen a single well-phrased mail sent to the FSG rules committee that provides arguments or alternative solutions in a competent and respectful way. Currently it feels more like a flame war, mainly driven by alumni & emotions.

Something that you might have missed in my last post is that I said that it is not about the good/proper teams who are able to deal with the safety challenges. Those usually do not catch fire or lose tires and wings. This is about all teams which are short on team members, time or any other resource that you can think of, which usually provides a good field for shallow or unfinished designs and lots of head scratching in scrutineering.

Looking forward to your replies.

BTW: There is no need to get personal and a civilized post is more likely to be read completely compared to a random amount of name-calling.

[_J_]

I must also add that all that I write is always my personal opinion and view on things and never an official statement of the FSAE or FSG rules committee.


Opinion = Unofficial Statement



There seems to be a huge interest in this topic, but I have not seen a single well-phrased mail sent to the FSG rules committee that provides arguments or alternative solutions in a competent and respectful way.


Formal Complaint derived from Unofficial Statement?

[Z]

Tobias,

Clearly, these Rule changes are not a serious attempt to improve overall safety in FSAE. This is clear because there are so many other much higher priority safety issues that these Rule changes do not address (see many earlier posts).

Clearly, it follows that there must be other, non-safety related, issues that have lead to these Rule changes. Tilting the playing field against cars like GFR and Monash, and towards cars like Stuttgart and 4WD Electric, seems to be a likely reason.

Clearly, despite your suggestion that disagreeing teams should contact the FSG committee in "a competent and respectful way", there has been, in the formulation and delivery of these Rule changes, ABSOLUTELY NO SUCH "RESPECTFUL" COMMUNICATION IN THE OTHER DIRECTION.

Why the "authoritarian" secrecy? Why is "the fence" now so high?? What are you trying to hide???

Z

[BillCobb]

All vehicles entered in the Durability Event must first pass successfully through a rotary brush type car wash utilizing a single track conveyer pushing the left rear wheel. All options must be selected: wax, wheel-wells, extra rinse, blow dryer and mirror + wipers tear off station.

The driver must be suitably equipped for immersion in all the crap from the previously washed car.

[bob.paasch]

First of all, I personally understand your frustration and I also totally agree that these changes came out very late.

I also agree with the points about fire being the most underestimated danger and not well covered in the rules. I personally argue since years about that, but my arguments were not heard until now.

Before I continue, just ask yourself one question and play it through in your minds: What if we had implemented a rule that requires an onboard fire suppression system or that makes HANS mandatory? There would be argueing about the cost, packaging, driver ergonomics, you name it. Same kind of posts, different topic.


If FSG implemented those rules in November, yes there would be outcry. However, neither HANs device use or on-board fire suppression would have the impact on overall vehicle design that this change would have. That is the major issue here, a very late change that has a huge impact on the design of suspension, chassis and aero.



However, this is not about other rules, this is about the FSG aero rules.

I am NOT a mechanical engineer. I am a sparkie, but I tried to tell my understanding of the reasons for these rules. I probably should not have tried that as I might have been wrong in many things, especially regarding the mechanical details. I must also add that all that I write is always my personal opinion and view on things and never an official statement of the FSAE or FSG rules committee. I will ask the "mechanical" guys of the FSG rules committee to provide more insight.

From here on, I will just interprete what I have read in the posts:

Restricting aero: Why is this bad at the first place? Bob and others for example argued that these rules restrict vehicle performance and going unsprung with aero would make the cars faster. Why make them faster? The educational aspect does not really benefit from that, in my opinion. Yes, aero is important in industry as well, but there is no difference for this aspect, IMHO, whether that aero is sprung or unsprung. You probably learn more, if it has to be sprung, because I can not think of another application in which unsprung aero is used/allowed, though this can totally be my fault.
Again: Why make them faster? It will lead to tighter courses, make the courses less fun to drive, just to keep the speeds rule compliant (although I understand that not every competition aims to have rule compliant track layouts). I currently can not see a disadvantage in the aero limiting effect of these rules.

The main problem is that the rules for FSG14 are now very different from those of any of the other 2014 FSAE/FS competitions in the world. If the international rules committee wants to limit aero, I have no problem with that. In fact, I argued several years ago in these forums that the current aero rules would make good aero a necessary condition for winning the major competitions. That has happened, and I have no problem with a new set of FSAE rules that restrict aero. If FSAE had announced in late August that the aero rules would be changing in 2015, I would happily accept that. If FSAE had included these changes in the 2014 FSAE rules, I would have been unhappy at the lack of notice, but would have accepted the changes. But here we have one competition deciding unilaterally that they will operate under a set of rules very different from all the other competitions, and they announce it after many teams have already designed their 2014 vehicles.

I bring up the 2013 GFR car to illustrate a point. That design would now be illegal at FSG. To remain competitive in 2014, we need to improve that design. If we build our 2014 car to the FSG rules, it will not be competitive at Michigan, FSUK (if we go) or FS Austria. If we want to attend those competitions plus FSG, we have to have two completely different aero packages. This is not a trivial design and manufacturing challenge. If we could skip FSG, I would recommend that to the team. But that would not be acceptable to our German sponsors.



Regarding the "That has never happened yet" writers:
I probably do not have to remind you that it is not that smart to wait for an accident to happen and then act on the cause. Otherwise I am happy to ask every motorcycle driver who has not been in a crash, why he would wear a helmet or why cars now have airbags. It worked fine without them in the past...I know, polemic, but so is the argument "that it has never happened before".


I may not have had a motorcycle accident but I know others that have. There are statistics on the number of accidents per mile ridden. I have not had airbags go off in my car, but airbags in his Honda Accord saved my sons life. We have national accident data that shows us that there is a real and significant probability that accidents requiring these devices can and will occur. With this perceived "unsprung and high aero problem" there is neither experiential evidence that there is a problem, nor is there any analytical evidence presented by the FSG rules committee that there is a problem. We are engineers, we make decisions on data. What is the probability of an unsprung aero failure causing an injury? Show us data and analysis. There is none.



@Bob:
If you really think that we (FSG) aim to specifically restrict your team's performance than you should honestly think about it again. Because that would mean that you think that we are biased against single teams which means that we are not trustworthy. This is arrogant, but teams often overestimate their own visibility/importance when they try to switch their minds to "official view". I personally do often not even read the team/university name, when I am answering rules questions or applying penalties. It just doesn't matter. All teams are treated the same way.


Reread my post. The point I made is that you disadvantage all potential FSG teams who's first competition is in Australia or North America. This is essentially all Australian and North American teams.

And while you may not mean to restrict my team's performance, that is the technical result of these changes.



Some things are also driven by organisational aspects: Many posts asked for a defined test or extra documents to be submitted instead of banning it right away. On the other hand most of you want a shorter rule book and fast scrutineering. Choose your weapon, but only one please! Either you want one or the other. I don't argue that there is much room for improvement with respect to "phrasing efficiency" in the rules, but this is not the point here.

The proposal to have a paid scrutineer visiting the teams is just rubbish. Sorry, but on one hand one of the main topics every year is team budget and about the rich and the poor. Now a "rich" team can afford to have a Scrutineer over and pay him/her. A "poor" team instead might have a way better solution, but cannot afford the scrutineer and thus must compete without. I think some people forget that despite very few people all of us are unpaid volunteers. We have a real job. We do this in our free time and I think it will be hard to find enough people to travel around and visit every single team. From a team's viewpoint most of them time the view only consists of that single team. But in real life, we are dealing with 115 teams. Now think what would happen, if each of them would need a scrutineer to check their aero. You might argue that this is unlikely and that might be true. However, no team would accept not being able to run, because no scrutineer is left to check their aero prior comp.


Here I agree, extra documents or extra scrutineering is rubbish.



The last thing I am wondering about:
There seems to be a huge interest in this topic, but I have not seen a single well-phrased mail sent to the FSG rules committee that provides arguments or alternative solutions in a competent and respectful way. Currently it feels more like a flame war, mainly driven by alumni & emotions.


As has been pointed out, we do not yet have any official notice of these changes, just a mention at the FSG Workshop and your tweets. If the FSG rules committee does not read these forums, I would be happy to send an email to them.



Something that you might have missed in my last post is that I said that it is not about the good/proper teams who are able to deal with the safety challenges. Those usually do not catch fire or lose tires and wings. This is about all teams which are short on team members, time or any other resource that you can think of, which usually provides a good field for shallow or unfinished designs and lots of head scratching in scrutineering.

Looking forward to your replies.

BTW: There is no need to get personal and a civilized post is more likely to be read completely compared to a random amount of name-calling.

Nothing personal Tobi, sorry you are getting the heat for this ill-thought-out decision.

[TMichaels]

No worries Bob, I have already adapted to getting the heat for official decisions or decisions of committees I am part of. I am just trying to provide insight and also act as a lightning rod. I have been on the team side of the fence many years and would also have been involved in such discussions as a team member. However, for reasons of loyalty and the fact that the committees decide based on majority, I am always trying to defend the official part in this forum, no matter whether I have voted for or against that specific rule. This often leads to a "kill the messenger" mentality, but I understand and accept that. I would probably have acted the same way as a team member: "There is the reason for our frustration, a rules committee member. Kill it with fire!"
Nonetheless having a counterpart often leads to more constructive discussions than without, so I will continue to act as the devil's advocate in rules discussions.

Back on topic:
In my naive thinking lowering the rear wing behind the MRH reduces downforce in the rear. So the challenge is to reduce downforce in the front to keep the car in balance, for example by reducing the angle of attack of the front wing. This sounds like a setup change to me. So aero gurus out there, please tell me why this is an overly simplified view at the problem.

[JT A.]

Back on topic:
In my naive thinking lowering the rear wing behind the MRH reduces downforce in the rear. So the challenge is to reduce downforce in the front to keep the car in balance, for example by reducing the angle of attack of the front wing. This sounds like a setup change to me. So aero gurus out there, please tell me why this is an overly simplified view at the problem.

I think you're correct, that is basically what it would force most teams to do. However, I don't think this is good from a design challenge/educational standpoint because generally reducing downforce is much less of an engineering challenge than increasing it.

The spirit of this competition has always been to allow as much freedom and innovation as feasibly possible. Having more freedom in design means that students have a choice, and therefore must evaluate their choice carefully to achieve the best performance. They start with a blank slate, nearly endless possibilities, and have to use intuition, analysis, simulation, physical testing, etc, to come up with the best solution. Going through that process of analysis, simulation, & testing is some of most valuable educational experience you can get from this competition. When you take away the design freedom, there is no choice for the students to make anymore, and therefore no reason to do the analysis, testing, etc. And there is less of a performance difference to separate the cars and reward the teams that did better engineering, which is why GFR and many other good teams are understandably upset by the rule change.

Before this new rule, the rear wing could be located anywhere from ~25 to infinity inches above the ground (limited by the tennis ball rule). With such a large envelope, the choice of the wing height can make a huge effect on downforce and drag values, which means teams that want to their wings to perform well have to do good analysis & testing to make sure they've picked the right location. Now with this new rule, on my team's car (with what I'd consider to be a "medium" sized wing), there is maybe 2-3" of freedom that we can move the wing vertically. Which means we could just completely guess at the wing height and be within ~1.5" of the "optimal" height. So now teams that just guess at the wing height will have close to the same performance as a team that can do high quality simulation & testing to validate their decisions. I think that goes against what this project is about; encouraging students to learn good engineering practices by getting to see the results of their engineering in a competitive environment. I realize that good teams can still separate themselves with profile design, endplates, angles, gaps & oversets, etc, but from my experience these have a much smaller effect than wing height. I'll throw out some ballpark numbers to illustrate what I'm trying to say- under the 2013 rules, GFR probably put 2-3x better engineering work into their wings package compared to my team, and resulted in a wing package that was probably 50% better in terms of downforce. Under the more restrictive 2014 rules, they could put 2-3x better engineering work for only a 5-10% better wing package. I think everyone can understand why they would be unhappy with that. It takes away their incentive to do that extra analysis, and it reduces other teams' incentive to improve their analysis to GFR's level. With less incentive to learn better simulation & analysis techniques, students will learn less, which obviously is bad for the competition.

Similarly, regarding the ban on unsprung aero- Dr. Paasch mentioned that GFR has simulated unsprung aero and shown that it will improve the performance of the car. I'm not sure if that means they've simulated the roll & pitch sensitivity of the wings, or they've developed a transient tire model that can predict the effects of softer spring rates & load variation on mechanical grip. Either way, that kind of simulation is advanced beyond what my team & probably the vast majority other teams are currently doing. Their students obviously must have put a lot of effort and learned a lot from developing those simulations, and their team should be rewarded for it by placing better at competition. But since FSG has banned it, they either A) Don't go to FSG, and don't get to see how their design stacks up against top competition or B)Throw out the results of all their work, design a sub-optimal car for FSG's overly restrictive rules, and suffer a performance disadvantage in the American competitions, or C) increase their workload & costs even more and design two aero packages to stay competitive at FSG and other events.

In summary, I think restricting design choices removes the incentive to analyze different options, and eliminates the educational benefits that go along with that analysis.

[MegaDeath]

Is there a possibility that if these rules are enforced at FSG 2014 they could allow cars that aren't compliant to still compete but with a point penalty as was done at Michigan in 2009 with the introduction of templates? At that event, if you didn't pass template you could still compete but with a 35 point penalty to design. Seems harsh, but TU Graz still won the event by a decent margin even with the penalty.

Since one of the big concerns is for cars that are already built (Monash) I think this would be a fair option to allow them to still compete. I still think these rules are complete BS, but if the FSG rules committee is determined to implement them for 2014, then this would be a decent way to still allow teams like Monash to compete. It would even allow the US teams to have the option and choose if they want to comply or not, that way they could compete evenly with the 2013 European cars in Michigan in May.

[Xfsae]

Dissapointed about the redneck heated type reaction to the prospect of a scrutineer visiting a team that has proposed a highly innovative aero concept that is bound to affect safety:
- How many teams would do that 1 or 2 each year ?
- I proposed also that an organization such ImechE ,SAE can cover such expenses that in many cases may not be high (find scrutineer living nearby).Let alone the fact that the scrutineer him/herself might offer to do it on their expense (especially if someone associated with more than one ways with the competition-see below)
- Offered also a complete package of how the team could most of the testing work on the spot before entering an event etc (bags of weight etc - thats how they do it also in F1... read what i wrote with a cool mind- inspectors will mostly have to look in the 2 minutes that such test takes place- and this is not for all teams but those presenting those potentially "dangerous" solutions
-About all the fear about extra papers or tests...like it or not this is how the world works. Why not send a common email to a big list of companies asking for some help ? There might(i think will) be people there more than happy to offer their expertise from analyzing and testing composite components not to mention offer maybe some hours for testing within their facilities for teams that dared to do something different... There are people working with ANSYS/Fibersim/Simulia etc all around the world on analysis of composite structures in critical conditions ( i bet they will have a lot of advice-methodologies also for teams designing with composites-fantastic learning experience), there are also many testing facilities....How about that being a sweet reward for a team that tried something different to have their "flexible" suspension loading undertray tested at the facilities of a motorsport team,windblade manufacturer etc .Those things happen everyday in all parts of the world today people, embrace the technology and bring the expertise of professionals close to the competition this is what its all about : learning first , winning a race on the track is secondary for a student team. This type of experience is bound to land to some of them jobs , driving well to win the endurance wont land any to most of them except of they decide for a change in career to race driver quite late in their lives...

As for the cars getting faster you can think about :
-limiting max cc
-limiting restrictor
-a combination of the above - like the Endurance racing rules of the 80s that managed to allow many different solutions
like naturally aspirated V12s , Flat turbo and even wankels (real such a same they are still not allowed- again 1or2 people working in a company like Ricardo could offer voluntarily their help to come up with a formula that brings in par several different engine solutions and max bhp/torque desired/deemed as safe by the organisers of events and this might be an actual computer program that can be downloaded from the internet by the teams where they could enter their data and come up with max cc /restrictor size depending on the data they enter-all this could be done with utter confidentiality in that way)

No preaching here just think about the above people with a cool mind and a long term view

[Pennyman]

My 2c.

If these rules were changed based on feedback from teams similar to a NHTSA New Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) or the FSAE rules committee (see post #2 in an adjacent thread), then no harm done. If there was no request for comment, it may behoove the FSG organizers to come up with a feedback period just following the event tailored to address possible rule changes (you may already have this, I'm not sure). With FSG being now the premier Formula Student event, consultation on every divergence with the FSAE rulebook should be (and no doubt already is) extremely important.

The alternative is you'll start seeing teams developing bespoke systems that are added/removed between events to maximize performance based on rules compliance. I bet some of the best teams have been doing this already to some extent...

[bob.paasch]

From the 2014 FSAE Rules:

A2.3 Rule Variations
All competitions in the Formula SAE Series may post some minor rule variations specific to the operation of the events in their countries. However, the vehicle design requirements and restrictions will remain unchanged. Any rule variations will be posted on the websites specific to those competitions.

So it really comes down to an opinion: are these FSG specific aero restrictions "minor"? Are these "specific to the operation of the events in their countries," or do these aero restrictions impact "vehicle design requirements and restrictions" which must remain "unchanged"?

I would argue these FSG specific aero restrictions are far from "minor" and they markedly impact the fundamental design of these vehicles. They are not about event operation, they are restrictions on vehicle design.



The alternative is you'll start seeing teams developing bespoke systems that are added/removed between events to maximize performance based on rules compliance. I bet some of the best teams have been doing this already to some extent...

This is what will happen, at least with the top teams. GFR will not be going to Michigan with a small "FSG compliant" wing package, I can guarantee that. If Monash decides to go to FSUK, I expect them to have their best aero package. If we go to FSUK, we will have our Michigan aero package. All the rest of the top combustion teams will do the same or they will not be competitive. With the TSAL visibility rule for e-cars, this is one area where the c-cars might regain some ground. This situation will put even more distance between the combustion teams that have the organization and resources to build two aero packages and those that don't.

[Z]

With FSG being now the premier Formula Student event...
I reckon the above is the root cause of the problem.

Some poor soul on the FSG committee has gone on a power-crazed ego-trip;

"HA HA! Vee can do ez vee pleez!!

Und dey alle vill still hef to kom tu ze grossest Kompetizon in ze wholl Welt!!! Muu-ahh-ha-hahaha... [Insert more maniacal laughter]"

But will we ever know whose idea this is, or why (really why)?

Z

(PS. A car's fixed bodywork can be a "device generating downforce", and I'm pretty sure it attaches to the suspension. Who writes these Rules?)

[TMichaels]

Dissapointed about the redneck heated type reaction to the prospect of a scrutineer visiting a team that has proposed a highly innovative aero concept that is bound to affect safety:
- How many teams would do that 1 or 2 each year ?
- I proposed also that an organization such ImechE ,SAE can cover such expenses that in many cases may not be high (find scrutineer living nearby).Let alone the fact that the scrutineer him/herself might offer to do it on their expense (especially if someone associated with more than one ways with the competition-see below)


I agree that this would work for an amount N of teams. But what would be done, if more than this number N of teams needs a scrutineer visiting them? Sorry, I am still not convinced. Regarding the expenses: Many competitions fight for their live (financially). They do not need another burden.


-About all the fear about extra papers or tests...like it or not this is how the world works. Why not send a common email to a big list of companies asking for some help ? There might(i think will) be people there more than happy to offer their expertise from analyzing and testing composite components not to mention offer maybe some hours for testing within their facilities for teams that dared to do something different... There are people working with ANSYS/Fibersim/Simulia etc all around the world on analysis of composite structures in critical conditions ( i bet they will have a lot of advice-methodologies also for teams designing with composites-fantastic learning experience), there are also many testing facilities....How about that being a sweet reward for a team that tried something different to have their "flexible" suspension loading undertray tested at the facilities of a motorsport team,windblade manufacturer etc .Those things happen everyday in all parts of the world today people, embrace the technology and bring the expertise of professionals close to the competition this is what its all about : learning first , winning a race on the track is secondary for a student team. This type of experience is bound to land to some of them jobs , driving well to win the endurance wont land any to most of them except of they decide for a change in career to race driver quite late in their lives...

It is hard to find sponsors for the competition itself and also volunteers/judges. From my personal experience on the organizational side of things, this case is highly unlikely, because it would effectively mean that the company pays someone to check these things and also to operate these facilities. Dekra does that for FSG, but I am currently not aware of another example.
Additionally many sponsors of teams will probably forbid them to let their simulations be checked by direct competitors. I don't say that this makes sense, but politics are always involved and therefore it will happen that company A drops out of sponsoring because company B is checking technical documents etc. It has happened before.

[Trevor]

FSG has just posted a video of the presentation being given: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYAEn52-8o8&feature=youtu.be. This was not announced on the FSG homepage, but it can be found when you log in on the FSG workshop page: https://www.formulastudent.de/academy/workshops/20131102-beg-abstatt/. There are still no official rules other than the v1.0 FSE rules: https://www.formulastudent.de/fse/2014/rules/ which do not have any aero rules changes from 2013.

I am very concerned this is all being done quietly and not shared with the world.

[TMichaels]

Trevor,
it is not our intention to do this quietly. Otherwise I would not be tweeting it or posting in this forum. The reason that there are no rules available yet is that we are still discussing about these rules due to the feedback provided by the community. Therefore, without saying anything specific, you may consider it a good sign.

[jbgerm]

To be honest, the rules change and the way how and when it has been (or not been) published is absolutely unprofessional. I can totally understand that a lot of people are getting upset about that. I'm also not happy about it and I'm no more in any direct relation to the competition. But what about the people who spent most of their time or even a part of their live with this project? Never forget you are in the position to change the rules. I remember a saying which tells: "With great power, comes great responsibility." And in my Opinion people are staying still really calm here...

As a participant of the formula student you are always told to follow the rules. I don't get rid of the feeling, that these rules apply for all teams, but not for the FSG rules committee itself. For every single sheet you have to send there's a deadline. But for the publishing of the rules it's not. The rules have a huge effect on the design of the car, so you should be able to read them early and rely on them, shouldn't you?

You are talking about safety reasons and unfinished designs. So to avoid unfinished designs the teams should start earlier to design, build, test and improve their car. But can they start as long as the rules are not reliable and published yet?

What about different rules for the different competitions? It will lead to different aero packages. So every team has to design and build another one if they want to be competitive. I'm sure that just to adapt them is a bad solution. So will they have more time to test if they already have to build two packages? I don't think so... So with the same or less time to test their aero packages, which are now two, how many time will every single aero package be tested? I'm sure it's not more than when they have just one single aero package.

I think we can discuss a lot about if these changes increase the safety or not. In the end it's just a matter of everyone's personal opinion, because there are no facts or tests or anything objective we can rely on.

Short offtopic: You can also give equal conditions to the E-teams if you allow them to set the TSAL on any adaption which is over the highest point of the MRH, which would also improve the visibility a lot!

What about the thought of consistent rules for all competitions all over the world? You said you want to set equal conditions for all teams. So if you change the rules in a time when some teams already have built their car because their first competition starts way earlier, do they have equal conditions? I don't think so. And it's also bad for all the small teams which not have the manpower to build different aero packags.

So to be honest, in my opinion, it would be the most professional way if the rules are not going to be published as they are told to be at the FSG Work Shop. It would be a great sign of respect to the teams work if you change the rules back. If you don't, in my humble opinion, it's just a sign of disrespect to all the students work.

What else will be when the rules are going to be the presented way?
Some teams will not take place in the FSG competition. The competition will going to be less competitive and less attractive. As a member of a partaking team I would be horribly disappointed that at FSG I will not have the possibility to compete with the best teams of the world. Therefore you have to go to other competitions. That couldn't be what FSG wants, or am I wrong?

No one likes big discussions like these, but if we want to make them something worth we can learn out of them how to make it better.

So here are my suggestions:

Stay with the FSG rules close to the FSAE rules to avoid the necessity of building different packages for different events.
Define a deadline for the publishing of the rules which is early enough so every team which will take part at the event can consider it. It would be the most professional way when every competition does it at the same time. I don't know if that is possible, but it would be professional.
Include the teams into the change of the rules. (I read that Tobi had already proposed it. Good job!)
Use a way to publish things like that which are accesible for everyone and communicate them as good as possible. I know you like to say "You've got to inform yourself." But I'm sure a formula student team member hast better things to do than checking every competition page. And I don't think that it's a big effort to send a Mail to all the last years participating teams if there are some news.



Just my humble opinion to still improve great competition :)

Joni

[TMichaels]

We have decided to shift both proposed Aero Rules changes to 2015 due to FSAE Rule A2.3 and the respective feedback by the community.

May the re-bashing (bashing because we changed our minds and are not non-reflective morons, although I understand that we have been perceived as morons due to initially proposing these rules) begin.

On a side note: It was the constructive feedback that we got which made the difference, not the bashing.

[jbgerm]

Great Move!

[SNasello]

Tobias, I don't think there is any re-bashing required. The important thing is that we all learn from this situation and make improvements to the competition and the rules change/creation process for the future.

I think many teams will be happy that the rules are going to stay the way they are, as by this point, major conceptual layout should be long finished (for the teams that this will affect) and detailed design is well under way.

[bob.paasch]

Tobias:

Please thank the FSG Rule Committee on our behalf. This decision is much appreciated.

[TMichaels]

I just wanted to add that we also proposed these changes to the global FSAE rules committee in order to have consistent rules in 2015.

[Scott Monash]

This is excellent news, and will surely come as a big relief to many teams.

Tobias, please pass on our sincere thanks to the FSG rules committee for their common sense in this matter.
Also we really appreciate the role that you have played in mediating this issue within the community.
If you hadn;t taken the time to announce the proposed change and given the teams a chance to respond we may have been stuck with it.

We are also appreciative of the support shown by our local representatives (David Ford) on the International Rules Committee.

We look forward to (still) seeing everyone at FSUK and FSG in 2014! :cool:

Scott

PS: We might start a thread relating to unsprung mounting of wings, I am sure we have some people at Monash who can help advise teams on how to mount a rear wing unsprung in such a way that it doesn't wobble around too much.

[Tom Wettenhall]

Offhand, why is this safer anyway?

Restricting wing height: Rules already require that you can lay a level between the roll hoop and the steering wheel without touching the driver's head. So if your wing mount fails, the wing can roll forward (disregarding the fact that, as mentioned earlier in this thread, it almost certainly won't) but if it can clear the roll hoop it'll clear the driver, unless it's a proper silly construction with an extremely rearward pivot. Failing that, it wouldn't be hard to make a rule which says that the arc of the wing's movement when x number of its constraints fails does not include the driver without first including the roll hoop. Both the Monash and GFR systems fit this requirement, and I'd say it would be extremely unlikely that either of those wings could fail in such a way as to injure the driver. (except maybe by him/her hitting the wall thereafter)

Unsprung wing mounting: I can understand that this will improve safety by slowing the cars down, (why is anyone running sprung aero at present anyway?) but I would say the consequences of wing or suspension failure as a result of unsprung mounting are already sufficiently accounted for. Drivers wear protective gear, cars do not operate in close proximity to each other and marshals and spectators are kept well clear of airborne debris. Where do you stop regulating?
Surely, in the spectrum of racing accidents, catastrophic suspension failure is honestly minor. Corner fails, car stops. Alarming but safe. The kinds of failures we need to worry about are the kinds which either kill the driver, or remove control from the driver without removing momentum from the car. Fire, steering failure, brake failure.

Having said all that, if these new wing rules are adopted by the worldwide FSAE competition, the wings/no wings/single/four-pot debate will all of a sudden get very interesting again...
While I lament the passing of the big-winged monsters of old, this means there will be something like eight teams roughly equally capable of winning FSAE-A as it puts two of the very best Aussie teams at a distinct disadvantage/on a more level field all of a sudden. It's a great idea from a parity point of view, to bring the increasingly dominant wing cars back to the same performance area as the non-wing cars. It just sucks that some of the really fun stuff isn't allowed any more.

[Z]

I was hoping to put together a longer post (rant?) on this subject, or on the other thread about FSAE becoming a spec series, but not enough time, so some brief summarising points here.
~o0o~

1. These FSG Rule changes, now proposed internationally, have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH SAFETY. I hope this is apparent to everyone by now. When Rule changes are introduced to genuinely improve safety, then "safety" is almost NEVER mentioned. It is usually something like "For reasons that are obvious to those aware of "The Incident" at xxx comp, we are ammending the following Rules...". No one will admit that their last comp was blatantly UNSAFE, by then talking about having to "improve safety". Human nature.....

2. The second most common excuse for changing the Rules is "to reduce costs". Yep, it is for your own good! Beware, because invariably these Rule changes drive up costs...

3. The real reasons for these type of Rule changes are a curious mix of Homo Mimicus's evolutionarily appropriate desire to want to copy whomever is the "trendsetter", or "VIP" (in this case F1, etc.), and a terrifying Fear of Change. Too long a subject to go into here, but human nature...

4. Tobias's earlier argument in support of the Rule changes, along the lines of "Why do you want to go faster anyway?", is an example of just how desparate, and irrational, the reasoning gets. Honestly, what is this competition all about? (Well, sure, it is about learning, and about winning, and about learning how to win, and so it must be about scoring more points than the other teams, and so, quite bloody obviously, about going faster! Well, at a higher AVERAGE speed!!!)

5. The proposed Rule changes WILL NOT MAKE THE CARS ANY SLOWER. The aero potential with sprung-aero, or wings-below-MRH, is still more than enough for much higher speeds than is currently seen. All that will happen is that the aero teams will have to fit stiffer springs. The cleverer aero teams will only fit stiffer anti-axle-bounce springs (= lateral-Z-bars, or "third-springs", to control Heave and Pitch), and possibly a stiffer whole-car-anti-roll-spring (see UWA-2012). This stiffer suspension, on a bumpy track, will make the cars LESS SAFE. Fortunately for the organisers, no bumpy tracks in FSAE.

6. Safety can be immensely improved in FSAE without making a single Rule change. For example, by supplying more fire extinguishers for the Marshals, etc. But the biggest safety gains come from appropriate track layouts, with good run-off areas, no stone walls at end-of-longest-straight, etc. Adding bumps to the track will further slow the cars, reducing kinetic energy available to cause damage. More bumps will also lead to better student learning of suspension design, in their desire to "go faster". But, I guess, Buckley's chance of that ever happening...

7. Much more to say, but I will leave it at this. If you students want to keep competing in an interesting, and educational, competition, then YOU HAVE TO SPEAK UP. If not, then FSAE becomes a boring spec series, with lots of polishing of turds...

Z

[RenM]

6. Safety can be immensely improved in FSAE without making a single Rule change. For example, by supplying more fire extinguishers for the Marshals, etc. But the biggest safety gains come from appropriate track layouts, with good run-off areas, no stone walls at end-of-longest-straight, etc. Adding bumps to the track will further slow the cars, reducing kinetic energy available to cause damage. More bumps will also lead to better student learning of suspension design, in their desire to "go faster". But, I guess, Buckley's chance of that ever happening...


You obviously haven't been to FSG yet. There are enough fire extinguishers, run-off ares and more then enough bumps on the track ;)

[Dunk Mckay]

I've been away for a while after completing my final year in FSAE in August at FSG I took a break. So I was shocked to return to this news. Less shocked when upon investigation I found it had been moved as a potential ruel change for 2014 and proposed for the whole of FSAE. My old team are planning to run aero for the first time next year and having a big rear wing was a key factor in making it worthwhile in our first year before optimisation begins, so the postponing of this change is a relief.

So, let me start just by saying that I fell that as the competition currently stands only a very small portion (say 10-20%) of the field actually start a year with the impression of having the chance of winning at the competition, and therefore to some extent do not try. This isn't to say that as individuals team members don't put in the effort. But when recruiting and trying to keep students involved over summer, being able to tell them you actually stand a chance of doing well makes a hell of a difference. This also has a similar effect on acquiring sponsorship, one could in fact look on every single team member as a sponsor who donate their time and skills (and literally sweat and blood in many cases) to the project. I feel that rarely is this taken into account when it comes to rule changes to "improve" the competition, and really should be, and hope to push for it more in future in any way I can.

To the point:

1. I don't see a major issue with removing unsprung aero, I think it can make a small difference for those teams with the resources to do it. Be it the manpower to design complex system or the money to pay for it's manufacture. But I don't see removing it as making any drastic changes to the competition, while it may do a disservice to some of the top teams, it plays in favor of the majority of the field that couldn't hope to achieve it, and makes little difference to the learning outcomes.
Yes it removes the option of some creative designs, but how often do they actually come along? Yes UWA tried, but even they were unsuccessful in their endeavors. I'm sure their are plenty of other creative ways to design a car than just unsprung aero or twin chassis, so if a team wants to think outside the box and go against the norm they are still free to do so, they'll just have to try to do it in ways that perhaps haven't been discussed at length on these forums.
I also fail to see any major safety advantage to this that couldn't be achieved far more easily by other means, such as supporting as certain wieght.

2. The active aero side of things has the same pros, as far as balancing the field is concerned as stated above, perhaps less so as a simple mechanical mechanism could, at present, be implemented by any team willing to try.
On the flip side I don't see any safety advantage whatsoever, as best I can tell this is just a side effect of trying to restrict unsprung aero without leaving any loopholes (or at least I hope it is).

3. Rear wing height. I completely disagree with the idea that a rear wing could fold over the MRH and hit the driver, perhaps that was as you say T, just a misinterpretation. If anything I would be more concerned about a front wing mount failing and it somehow flipping up and hitting the driver in the face.
I do however understand that tall rear wings could potentially pose a danger to marshals, and worse case following cars, if they were to fall off suddenly while a car was right up behind the car in front waiting to overtake.
For the latter issue One could propose a simple cable tether, although I doubt it is really a worry as it is unlikely any mounting structure has only a single member that could suddenly fail and allow the wing to detach completely (this could be added to the rules if there was any concern).
If wings at eye/face height is of concern (and it probably should be) then restricting them to roll hoop height is a silly way of doing it. I would not put it past some teams of being dumb enough to turn up with an extra long chassis only to have a stupidly high MRH just so they can have a tall wing and trounce the competition with an extra 50% downforce. They wouldn't trounce anyone of course because they'd be really long and weigh a ton, but they wouldn't realise that. I just don't see a problem with a simple height restriction on the rear wings, EASY PEASY. Looking at current cars and how tall people are, some teams may have to tone things back a bit. But I don't think a restriction of say 1m35 would cause to much complaining.

What does concern me, with the MRH height rule, is that it's going encourage teams with the means to put full cowling over the rear of their car. So those with faster computers for more elaborate CFD, with more students and better supervisors, would be able to carefully redirect air to their now lower rear wing to maximize down-force. While those without those advantages might throw some basic panels over the back and maybe gain nothing. Worse still, as was seen a lot this past summer at FSUK and FSG (if not elsewhere), overheating is a major cause of drop outs in endurance events (something else that needs quenching), if people start enclosing their engine bays willy-nilly, this is going to be even more of an issue.


IN SUMMARY
-I believe the current regulation do a great job of ensuring safety at the events, while safety should remain an important factor, I think focus should be put on trying to balance the field a little bit more for teams with less resources and to try to improve reliability, 50% of cars finishing a simple 22km endurance is pathetic for what is supposed to be the greatest student engineering competition on Earth.
-I would suggest a maximum wing height rule in the 1.3m region.
-For testing structural integrity of wing mounting (front and rear) I believe judges should calculated a rough estimate of the maximum load any wing could realistically achieve, double it for safety (and in case of fatigue failures), and then state that all cars with wings must submit to a sandbag test. Where a certain mass of sand bags would be placed, during scrutineering, in a specified manner, onto the main plane(s) of the cars wing(s) until said load is reached. The only requirement would be that it it not break off. Very simple and time effective to implement and very easy to design for, also ensuring greater reliability for the event.

[JulianH]

Well a car with "Monash Aero" is probably hitting cL*A of about 5 to 5.5... with a car speed of about 130kph that leads to about 4.300N of downforce. Double that and you have about 860kg. If the rear wing will make about half of the downforce that would mean 430kg of sand. I think it is a bit tricky to place this "correctly on the main plane" during scrutineering. And only think about the 2034 "Z"-car with a cL*A of about 20...
And it would force a team with say a cL*A of 2 to have a wing that is designed for much higher loads..

In any other case, I think your post is correct... the fact that only a small portion of the field is able to win is (sadly) completely true. What's even more sad is, that the top-teams remain basically unchanged in the last four years that I was part of the competition.. you have maybe 5 teams in each class that dominate. "Surprise winners" like Chalmers at Silverstone 2012 are really rare... The question is, if there is something possible to do about this. I even think that the same teams would be on top if you would say "Ok aero is forbidden, 4WD is forbidden, CFRP is forbidden". The project-management of the top teams and their knowledge is so far above the typical "mid-field" team that is just trying to survive Endurance... yes every team at FS(AE) is a winner and yes everybody should choose their own goals, but the competition gets split up further and further and some day, I fear that the spirit will maybe "die" when there are the top-teams and the rest.. but we are getting away from topic here.

Tobias from FSG proposed that all teams should be involved in the new-rules-making for 2015. Are there any news about this? Will there be a Wiki or something where the teams can discuss issues?
It would be even a start to know which rules will be in state 2015, yes there are the proposed rule-changes in the 2014 rules but I think it won't stop there, am I correct?

[mech5496]

In essence, I agree with Dunk's post. However, teams are allowed to compete within a rule set that is the same for everyone, so... There are rules (4wd cars) that make every other team uncompetitive (3.45sec acceleration runs by ETH in Italy left no-hope to others; and implementing a proper 4wd system looks much harder than aero IMO). Anyway, hope the teams involve in the rules discussion and hope to have a clear definition of "aero devices", i.e. are streamlined a-arms considered "unsprung aero"?

[Trevor]

The FSG rules committee has released some new rules changes:

http://www.formulastudent.de/fsg/pr/news/details/article/new-version-of-the-fsc-and-fse-rules-published/

The text of the new rule is:

All teams are advised to always follow common practices and common sense when working
on the vehicle and when operating the vehicle, also before and after the event. Participating
in events not suitable for Formula Student vehicles like hillclimbs, drag races or similar wheelto-
wheel events is prohibited.
Whenever operating the vehicle, the driver must wear protection gear according to the rules.
Breaching this rule will lead to the team being moved to the end of the Scrutineering order no
matter which place they originally reached in the Scrutineering quiz, see 2.10.
The decision to move a team to the end of the Scrutineering order has to be made
unanimously by the FSG rules committee and will be made public on the FSG website.
NOTE: This rule has not been established to annoy you, but to ensure that we experience a
safe and accident free Formula Student season.

In my opinion this rule is pretty unclear. If we're just talking about driver protection the rule is pretty simple, but there is a lot left open to interpretation with "events not suitable for Formula Student vehicles". I understand FSG is trying to protect the safe reputation of Formula Student events to keep insurance costs down and continue to attract sponsors, but this sounds a lot like dictating what we can and can't do with our university's vehicle on our own time.

I would be very worried about imposing penalties without more clear rules of what is acceptable and what is not. There also seems to be no clarification of how this applies to current or old competition cars - afterall, many FS cars have a life after Formula Student.

Other thoughts?

[theTTshark]

The FSG rules committee has released some new rules changes:

http://www.formulastudent.de/fsg/pr/news/details/article/new-version-of-the-fsc-and-fse-rules-published/

The text of the new rule is:

All teams are advised to always follow common practices and common sense when working
on the vehicle and when operating the vehicle, also before and after the event. Participating
in events not suitable for Formula Student vehicles like hillclimbs, drag races or similar wheelto-
wheel events is prohibited.
Whenever operating the vehicle, the driver must wear protection gear according to the rules.
Breaching this rule will lead to the team being moved to the end of the Scrutineering order no
matter which place they originally reached in the Scrutineering quiz, see 2.10.
The decision to move a team to the end of the Scrutineering order has to be made
unanimously by the FSG rules committee and will be made public on the FSG website.
NOTE: This rule has not been established to annoy you, but to ensure that we experience a
safe and accident free Formula Student season.

In my opinion this rule is pretty unclear. If we're just talking about driver protection the rule is pretty simple, but there is a lot left open to interpretation with "events not suitable for Formula Student vehicles". I understand FSG is trying to protect the safe reputation of Formula Student events to keep insurance costs down and continue to attract sponsors, but this sounds a lot like dictating what we can and can't do with our university's vehicle on our own time.

I would be very worried about imposing penalties without more clear rules of what is acceptable and what is not. There also seems to be no clarification of how this applies to current or old competition cars - afterall, many FS cars have a life after Formula Student.

Other thoughts?

It's not a singular competition's job to be dictating what the student teams do once they are away from competition. Not to mention, everyone in FSAE is (should be) above 18. We're all training to become professionals and adults. Yet we can't be held responsible for our own actions? Yeah safety is important, but still every time this debate gets brought up I still have to point out that no one is requiring us to run on board fire systems or HANS devices. Yes they cost money, but at the same time banning teams from running events that get them significant exposure costs them sponsors I'm sure. Here in the US we've gotten quite a bit of money from driving at different kinds of events.

Yet again just seems like FSG is overstepping what it needs to do. But I'm just a student who's never gone to FSG, so maybe I'm completely off base.

[JulianH]

I think the "intention" of the rule is valid. Even in the last years and even from "experienced" European/US teams, there is footage online which I find very disturbing and just dangerous. Therefore, a "guideline" what students should look into when testing the car is a good thing.
But, we all know that the rule is not really enforcable. Just don't upload your stupid Non-IA/Non-Firesuit driving and you don't get a penalty. Teams are probably now starting to look closely what their members are uploading. "Clever" teams now don't get caught even if they break the rule...

If one compares FSAE with "motorsport", sure everybody can say: "It's not the business of the organisers what we (or even worse: the alumni) are doing with our old vehicles". Yes, but one simply has the imagine what happens if something like the Dundee (?) accident at Knockhill goes badly. Or if an electric vehicle does something stupid... FSAE is over really fast...
Therefore I can relate to the issues the organisers have with respect to safety.
Sometimes they take wrong turns, but in the big picture, they probably are trying their very best for a safe competition and a safe "overall behavior" of the project. Yes, some universites have enough safety mechanism to ensure the vehicle is used properly but that's not the case everywhere.

[Alumni]

I think this is a great rule and should be adopted at all competitions, though it is most unfortunate that a great deal of stupid videos are no doubt posted by young team members excited to see the car running, who probably don't realize they are filming a minor rules violation in some way, and who will no doubt drop off the team and join a frat by the time said team receives their penalty.

As far as alumni breaking rules, all I can say is that the team is still responsible for the car and it's operation, and rightfully so. I don't understand how anyone could possibly think different rules would apply to alumni. If it is a retired car, now privately owned, that should be obvious.

As a side note - what's with kids and their Go-Pros and youtubes these days? Back in my day the absolute last thing we ever wanted to do was get caught on camera!

[raitinger]

The FSG rules committee has released some new rules changes:

http://www.formulastudent.de/fsg/pr/news/details/article/new-version-of-the-fsc-and-fse-rules-published/

The text of the new rule is:

All teams are advised to always follow common practices and common sense when working
on the vehicle and when operating the vehicle, also before and after the event. Participating
in events not suitable for Formula Student vehicles like hillclimbs, drag races or similar wheelto-
wheel events is prohibited.
Whenever operating the vehicle, the driver must wear protection gear according to the rules.
Breaching this rule will lead to the team being moved to the end of the Scrutineering order no
matter which place they originally reached in the Scrutineering quiz, see 2.10.
The decision to move a team to the end of the Scrutineering order has to be made
unanimously by the FSG rules committee and will be made public on the FSG website.
NOTE: This rule has not been established to annoy you, but to ensure that we experience a
safe and accident free Formula Student season.

In my opinion this rule is pretty unclear. If we're just talking about driver protection the rule is pretty simple, but there is a lot left open to interpretation with "events not suitable for Formula Student vehicles". I understand FSG is trying to protect the safe reputation of Formula Student events to keep insurance costs down and continue to attract sponsors, but this sounds a lot like dictating what we can and can't do with our university's vehicle on our own time.

I would be very worried about imposing penalties without more clear rules of what is acceptable and what is not. There also seems to be no clarification of how this applies to current or old competition cars - afterall, many FS cars have a life after Formula Student.

Other thoughts?



Practicing in school parking lots without adequate run-off, safety barriers, medical personnel on site, and general adult supervision will be prohibited.

All students must complete basic OHSA training before being allowed in the pit areas.
Proper PPE must be worn at all times within the pit area boundaries.
Students must be safety certified to operate wrenches, hammers, files, vises, grinders, and welders, as well as work on 12V power systems.
All welding must be approved for a Hot Work permit, and welding zone inspected by a site safety official. Welding areas must be surrounded by certified welding curtain that must be approved at tech inspection.
Adequate hearing protection must be worn within 25' of all hammering and grinding.
Students will not lift loads exceeding 50lbs.
;)

[Jay Lawrence]

Just putting on my Z suit

"Nanny state...grumble grumble...cotton wool...grumble grumble"

Next step there'll be a union formed and there'll never be another car built.

[Bemo]

It's not a singular competition's job to be dictating what the student teams do once they are away from competition. Not to mention, everyone in FSAE is (should be) above 18. We're all training to become professionals and adults. Yet we can't be held responsible for our own actions? Yeah safety is important, but still every time this debate gets brought up I still have to point out that no one is requiring us to run on board fire systems or HANS devices. Yes they cost money, but at the same time banning teams from running events that get them significant exposure costs them sponsors I'm sure. Here in the US we've gotten quite a bit of money from driving at different kinds of events.

Yet again just seems like FSG is overstepping what it needs to do. But I'm just a student who's never gone to FSG, so maybe I'm completely off base.

If you don't participate at FSG you can do with your cars whatever you want. And what people who complain about this new rule miss is that the punishment is quite reasonable. It is only a bad scrutineering slot. Thisdoesn't mean you don't have a chance for a good overall result but still hurts. Every competition can organize the scrutineering queue based on whatever criteria they think are right. If the organisers want to use the behaviour of a team during the year it is their damn right to do so. People also seem to expect the FSG organisers to punish teams all the time from now in because no fire extinguisher was visible in a video. I don't have a clue why they should do so. In the past teams got punished at FSG only when it was absolutely obvious that they did something wrong. The examples they gave are definitely stupid and risky actions. Btw shortly after the run at hill climb race of the Rennteam car someone died in a crash at this event in a car which you can consider much safer than an FSAE car...

Overall I can fully understand that they want to do something about this because while watching the videos teams upload you can only come to the conclusion that it is a matter of time until a bad accident will happen. And in this case the organisers will also suffer under bad publicity. Back when I was still an active team member I thought about stuff like this differently and was always ready for the most stupid and dangerous actions as long as it seemed like fun. But somehow I seem to be grown up during the last years at least a bit...

[Kevin Hayward]

The examples provided by FSG were all examples of poor judgement, however it does not immediately follow the reasoning that all cases of competing in hillclimbs / speed events / autocross' show similar poor judgement. This is the main point of disagreement with the rule and a valid one.

It is clear why the rule is desired by FSG, but ultimately it is hard to enforce, poorly defined , and ultimately not required (at least with reference to non-suitable events). The numerous grey areas include:

- What defines a suitable event? Top speeds, run-off areas, insurance, sanctioning body present, and so on.
- Who sets the definition of a suitable event and when?
- What constitutes a Formula Student Vehicle? Is it any vehicle that has previously competed in any FSAE / Student event? Any car that is currently legal? What if an old car has been modified to adhere to other rule sets? (Please note this is required to compete in other events)
- What happens if a team is involved in other competitions apart from FSAE, but with clearly non-Formula Student cars? For example the team participates in Formula Ford?
- How will this be enforced? Will each team be under scrutiny? Or will it be case by case as videos or stories appear adhoc?

What I think is a much better alternative is for FSG to contact each team via their Faculty Advisor / Head of Department upon official entry and outline the concerns the organisation has with respect to running vehicles outside of official competitions, and clearly explain where Formula Student cars fall short of the safety regulations of those competitions. Then leave it in the hands of the Universities to decide in consultation with their insurance what is appropriate usage of their own resources. At the same time include a statement in the rules that discourages the practices (so all teams can see). Something along the lines of:

"FSG encourages teams to adopt safe practices while using Formula Student vehicles outside of official events. Examples include ... It is the responsibility of the teams and their universities to adopt appropriate safety standards. FSG assumes no responsibility for accidents or injury that occurs outside of official events."

Obviously this is a case where you would want the input of the lawyer types. FSG should keep out of the business of teams outside of the event for its own good as much as for the good of the competitors.

Anyone who has worked at a university will tell you that a well worded letter outlining risks will not be ignored.

...

I will also encourage other teams to push back on these sorts of rulings (again only with respect to non-formula student events). A team should feel free to increase public awareness of the work we do, including public demonstration of the vehicles. We should not have engineers hiding their achievements in the fear. However choose your events carefully and focus on safe, sanctioned events. I would also encourage you to make sure that you are insured and to check with your university before competing.

I would also add a question. What would happen if every team at a competition had competed in a hillclimb / autocross event? Who is last then?

Kev

[Z]

There is something seriously wrong with the FSG Rules Committee.

Thank you, Kevin, for pointing out just some of the STUPIDITY, but in a much nicer way than I ever could.

But while I am here:

"Participating in events not suitable for Formula Student vehicles like hillclimbs, drag races or similar wheel-to-
wheel events is prohibited."

Who has EVER seen a hillclimb carried out as a "wheel-to-wheel" race??? They always have large time separations between the cars!

And drag racing is carried out in separate lanes, with a big concrete barrier down the middle. I cannot think of an actual racing event that would be SAFER for an FSAE/FS car than a day spent at a proper dragstrip. Educational too...

The FSG Committee is braindead. Please, someone, switch off the life-support...

Z

[rrobb]

Z,
I agree with your post for the most part, but as one who has undergone the training for SCCA Solo Safety Steward (SSS) certification (my hobby time is limited so I never completed the follow up "shadowing" of a current SSS), I can assure you that any SCCA sanctioned autocross is safer than a trip to the drag strip.

The main point is that drag racing (on an actual drag strip, not the street or some random parking lot) is a very safe, useful event for FSAE teams.

It's not as safe or useful as a real autocross, but outside of America, access to proper autocross events is limited.


Cory