research survey PLEASE HELP!

[deborah]

Hi everybody,
I'm currently a student at University of Glasgow doing a project on Pedal Boxes and would be very grateful if anyone could fill out the following questionnaire....
THANKS!

Deborah McGill

dmcgill@hotmail.co.uk
.....

1. How many different people will be using your pedal box? If more than one please specify ages.



2. Do you prefer using 3 pedal or 2 pedal systems?
3 2 Either
Reason for your answer:



3. What would you, on average, be prepared to spend on a pedal box?
Less than £200 £200-£300 £300-£500 £500+
4. For that amount, what features, if any, would you expect the pedal box to have?



5. How important is ease of adjustability to you?
Very Quite Not Important
6. If so, why and how often would you adjust the pedal box?



7. What is the maximum weight you would accept for a pedal box?
kg
8. What would be you reasons for having a light weight pedal box?



9. From an aesthetic point of view, how important is it for your pedals to look professional and pleasing?


10. Would you prefer to have a heavier pedal box in favour of it being stiffer? If so why?



11. What would be your preferred master cylinder arrangement?

[deborah]

Hi everybody,
I'm currently a student at University of Glasgow doing a project on Pedal Boxes and would be very grateful if anyone could fill out the following questionnaire....
THANKS!

Deborah McGill

dmcgill@hotmail.co.uk
.....

1. How many different people will be using your pedal box? If more than one please specify ages.



2. Do you prefer using 3 pedal or 2 pedal systems?
3 2 Either
Reason for your answer:



3. What would you, on average, be prepared to spend on a pedal box?
Less than £200 £200-£300 £300-£500 £500+
4. For that amount, what features, if any, would you expect the pedal box to have?



5. How important is ease of adjustability to you?
Very Quite Not Important
6. If so, why and how often would you adjust the pedal box?



7. What is the maximum weight you would accept for a pedal box?
kg
8. What would be you reasons for having a light weight pedal box?



9. From an aesthetic point of view, how important is it for your pedals to look professional and pleasing?


10. Would you prefer to have a heavier pedal box in favour of it being stiffer? If so why?



11. What would be your preferred master cylinder arrangement?

[Shashi]

Maybe you'd want to use www.surveymonkey.com (http://www.surveymonkey.com) www.surveymonkey.com (http://www.surveymonkey.com) . It'll make things easier for all.

[TorqueWrench]

After doing a bunch of these on campus for people's design projects...

1. Every person on the team will use the pedal box. Ages are 18 to 27. We have had people as old as 50 drive the car.

2. 2 Pedal system as there simply isnt enough room up there to fit three pedals comfortably.

3. I know our pedal box cost under $200 excluding the master cylinders.

4. Pedal box is adjustable for height, adjustable brake bias, and is very compact.

5. Not very important. After seeing a range of people sit in the car, most people actually liked the same spot. That really depends on the group of people you have driving the vehicle and their preferred driving positions.

6. Pedal box would be adjusted when drivers with different driving positions get in. In one of these car's hypothetical use, that would be one or two people.

7. I know that out pedal box, excluding master cylinders again, is less than 3 kg. I would consider deflection and pedal feel a much more important factor though.

8. Light weight pedal box would reduce overall vehicle mass and polar moment of inertia as it is rather far from the CoG. As said before, I would take a stiff assembly over a light one.

9. If I can press on them and they function, its good enough for me.

10. Yes. A pedal box that flexes a lot under braking will lose the feel you get through the assembly and will make it harder to put the correct force into the system.

11. I have seen good ones under slung and vertical. It really comes down to packaging and complexity.

[deborah]

thank you so much Chris, really appreciate that.

Deborah

[exFSAE]

Deb-

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">2. Do you prefer using 3 pedal or 2 pedal systems? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

3, even if the clutch is just a tiny "oh shit" pedal that you can kick at. If you spin out (happens often for some folks) and want to save the engine, it's a pain to fumble around for a hand clutch.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">3. What would you, on average, be prepared to spend on a pedal box? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Vague question, depends what you mean. "FSAE cost" ? as in how much would I want to spend on materials if I can have fabrication for free? Or real total cost?

Either way it should be pretty damn cheap and super simple. Pedals don't need to be anything more fancy than some square tube or sheet metal, with a welded-on plate for your foot.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">5. How important is ease of adjustability to you? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

It should be super easy to move the whole box forward and back a couple spots for drivers with different legs, so moreso than how important it is, there's really no excuse not to have it.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">6. If so, why and how often would you adjust the pedal box? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Whenever someone bitches that they cant reach the pedals.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">7. What is the maximum weight you would accept for a pedal box? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

As light as you can possibly make it by simple fabrication methods, before design freeze.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">8. What would be you reasons for having a light weight pedal box? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Light = fast. Heavy = slow.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">9. From an aesthetic point of view, how important is it for your pedals to look professional and pleasing? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Completely unimportant. Racecars are about function, not form... particularly anything that no one's gonna see on track.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">10. Would you prefer to have a heavier pedal box in favour of it being stiffer? If so why? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yup. But not by much. Given that the pedals only take load in one direction it's pretty easy to make them both stiff and light. Figure out how much load you expect, set a deflection limit, and go from there.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">11. What would be your preferred master cylinder arrangement? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

As low as possible.



Personally I don't think surveys like this are much use in racecar or FSAE car design, in terms of setting design targets. You're really trying to do an optimization and minimization problem. Targets should be set by your engineering judgment.

1. Figure out the most basic functional requirements for the thing. What is its job in life.

2. Figure out roughly what kinda physical space in the chassis you have to work with. Dimensions of a bounding box you have to work in. You may have to work with the frame engineer for this.

3. Set a design freeze date.

4. Bust your ass until the design freeze to make it as light, simple, and cheap as possible while meeting all the design criteria.

5. Build it as quick as you can without half assing it.

Just my 2 cents.

[Adambomb]

Very good thoughts exFSAE. I get the vibe this is for one of those class projects, you know the ones where you have to make a "house of quality" and do extensive DFM analysis. Here's my personal opinion:

1. How many different people will be using your pedal box? If more than one please specify ages.

about 25 occasional users (ages 18-55), 7 or so frequent users (age 18-30)


2. Do you prefer using 3 pedal or 2 pedal systems?
3 2 Either
Reason for your answer:

2...same space issues mentioned already, also it's less "stuff" you have to run up to the front of the car. And the guys on our team have really big feet too...our chassis guy wears size 17


3. What would you, on average, be prepared to spend on a pedal box?
Less than £200 £200-£300 £300-£500 £500+

Less than 200 GBP. Actually, less than 30 GBP...I'm also a fan of the rectangular tubing or sheet metal approach.


4. For that amount, what features, if any, would you expect the pedal box to have?

Some type of quick-release style adjustment (that is, that is actually quick-release in practice, not like our previous "quick release" style boxes that took 45 minutes to move...and therefore have never moved), bias bar for brakes


5. How important is ease of adjustability to you?
Very Quite Not Important

Tough one...for me it depends largely on your seating position. I still believe it is possible to build a car that will accomodate a large range of driver sizes with no adjustment (much like go karts), so not terribly important to me...but again it depends on your seating position


6. If so, why and how often would you adjust the pedal box?

If it were actually quick-release, every driver change


7. What is the maximum weight you would accept for a pedal box?
kg

2 kg



8. What would be you reasons for having a light weight pedal box?

Same reason everything else on the car is light, although more critical because we want to get rid of weight in the front of the car



9. From an aesthetic point of view, how important is it for your pedals to look professional and pleasing?

Only to the extent that the design judges will give us more "cool points" for having it "look like a racecar." In other words, it only needs to have good build quality and a clean, simple design, and be at least somewhat non-offensive to your feet.


10. Would you prefer to have a heavier pedal box in favour of it being stiffer? If so why?

Short answer: no...I truly doubt most drivers would care about a couple mm extra compliance, but I'm with exFSAE in that it's much better to just set a goal and let that drive everything else. I have driven cars with lots of compliance in the gas pedal (Humvee comes to mind), and it was certainly not confidence-inspiring, but as long as your tolerances are less than 3-4 mm or so and you don't have a lot of cantilevered BS going on (as is the case with the Humvee) I don't see it being an issue.


11. What would be your preferred master cylinder arrangement?

Low, rigidly mounted, with high-mounted, appropriately sized remote reservoirs

[woodsy96]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">
5. How important is ease of adjustability to you?
Very Quite Not Important

Tough one...for me it depends largely on your seating position. I still believe it is possible to build a car that will accomodate a large range of driver sizes with no adjustment (much like go karts), so not terribly important to me...but again it depends on your seating position
</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I quite like this idea. Our pedal box in last year's car was never adjusted for any of the drivers, so on this years car we don't have a pedal box at all. A bulkhead in the chassis was added to mount the master cylinders to and some hinges put on the bottom of the chassis to mount the pedals.

[deborah]

Thanks to everyone who filled this out and yes, its one of those class projects and just now we've just to get as much input from user's ...(it's a kind of ticky-box thing just to show we've done it!) but i really appreciate your replys, it is helping http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

big big thanks again!

Deborah