What are we designing/building? Prototype autocross racer or competitive FSAE car????

[AwesomeAlvin]

Coming back from my second fsae competition in fsae west it looks to me that most of the top teams are competitive exotic FSAE cars rather than a prototype weekend autocross racer. Being on an upper mid range team in west (15th place in 2008, 11th place in 2009) I may be slightly bias.

It makes sense that to win this competition, being competitive in the dynamic events is the priority since that is where all the points are. Hence the use of rare materials, and custom parts.

However, the static events levels out the playing field, and enforce teams to make a prototype weekend autocross racer rather than a highly unfeasible exotic small scale formula car.

One thing that does not make sense is when I walk down the design semi-final garage being flooded with monocoques, custom diffs, custom calipers, paddle shifters, one piece machined uprights, and carbon this carbon that. It seems to me that design judges no longer respect old school simplicity and engineering practicality.

Im not saying that monocoques and exotic materials are not suitable for a weekend autocross racer at all. I’m just saying that as of today, composite technology has not reached the level where it’s feasible to do so. If I was a weekend autocross racer I would rather buy a simple, reliable, and serviceable steel chassis race car with an old school shift lever that comes in a reasonable price.

And if I was an investor I will choose a design that could be easily manufactured in a simple shop with simple tools, and run as many purchased stock parts as possible.

If there are any design judges reading this, please comment.

[Lexusteck]

As far as I can tell, after 6 years of watching this series of events, the weekend racer concept has never been a serious design consideration. The idea of a car so fragile that it cant pass the brake test( sorry OSU, but you werent the first and probable wont be the last) is the opposite end of that spectrum. A car that can finish this event and then race the next weekend is what I would be interested in as a customer. Cars that cant run 20 laps in a row either havent been tested enough or havent been engineered to survive. Some of the "exotic " material is needed in some cases to have that reliablity and although it is more expensive, it is state of the current art of road racing. I spoke with a design judge from a Formula car manufacturer at FSAE West 2007 about tube frame cars and he couldnt think of any reason to build one without a spec design rule. Speaking of the reliability factor, having watched Kansas redesign their way into a solid, competitive team was mostly about making the car stronger, stiffer, and working on the little details that keep it running. This paid off with a string of 8 competitions where they finished all the events. The old racer adage that to finish first, first you must finish is true and how you win FSAE titles. Another indicator for KU is the JMS06 car that was finished early enough to test for about a month prior to Detroit, ran at Fontana, ran at UTA weekend in Texas, ran SCCA divisionals, Nationals and many, many weekend events usually with 2- 3 drivers since. It has had some DNFs but has survived and thrived in the Weekend Racer mode since its construction. It is now the test car for KU wings and aero testing and it possible the fastest car on the campus. (KU tries to keep them all available). How many other teams can say that. UTA, OU, MU S&T, Maryland I know about, but east and west coast teams dont seem to show up for solo events. Isnt that what the cars were designed for. I would like to see more teams at local events and at Nationals. If racing improves the breed then bring your cars out and make them better.

[MalcolmG]

I'm often frustrated by comments such as those that you've made. This isn't specifically aimed at you, but what you say echoes a lot of what I hear on these forums and from some teams and judges at comp, and while I agree with some of the points I think there is a belief that just because something didn't exist 20 or 30 years ago or that Dad didn't teach you how to do it in your garage, that it's complex and exotic and not suitable for an amateur racer.

The monocoque is a prime example here - since most amateur level, purpose built race cars have had space frames for the last 50 years (or more?), people look at a monocoque as a terrifying piece of new technology that should be left to F1 teams. So what are the downsides? The labour required for an experienced composite technician to lay up a monocoque using pre-cut fabric (which it would be if you were doing more than 4 or 5 - same as steel tubes would probably be laser cut and scalloped for a space frame), would probably amount to 20 to 30 hours, with another 5 or so on bagging and autoclave prep. The labour would be cheaper because the required skill level is much lower than a professional welder. The materials cost is much, much lower than most people seem to think it is, probably around $1500-2500US for 25m^2 of carbon + 8m^2 of glue film and 4m^2 of honeycomb core. And don't forget that once the monocoque is done there's usually little to no bodywork to manufacture. So your body and frame might cost somewhere around $5-7K US, which I would imagine isn't a great deal more than a space frame and body work built to a similar standard (maybe $3-5K? Don't have as good an idea of time or materials cost for space frames).

When I look at a space frame I see complexity - multiple tubes intersecting at a node requiring scalloping to a high accuracy, jigging and fixturing to locate all the aforementioned tubes, welding materials of considerably different thickness, welding at difficult angles with difficult access, post-production heat treating to relieve stresses, and I'm sure there's more intricacies that I don't know about. To an experienced spaceframe builder I'm sure that stuff is all easy - to me it sounds like more work than a monocoque http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif . The biggest cost in making a monocoque is really the tooling to do so - plugs and moulds are usually more expensive than the final part, but as the cost can be split across a lot of parts it reduces this part considerably.

The argument people make about repairing damage being difficult is somewhat valid, but boaties have been fixing fibreglass hulls themselves for decades, it's just a matter of learning the requisite skills and understanding the process. For major repairs a monocoque would need to be returned to the mould, but the same goes for major repairs on a spaceframe needing to be re-jigged and heat treated.

As far as custom one-off parts goes - if these were being produced at a rate of 1000 a year, those one-off parts would no longer be one offs, and would probably cost a similar amount to other "off the shelf" alternatives. The difference is that one way the manufacturer is making the profit, the other the profit goes to the generic part manufacturer.

I think in this competition there are advantages whichever way you go: if you use off the shelf parts and stick to manufacturing processes and materials that you know then the car should take less time to build and therefore the added testing time will allow you to extract more performance from your design. If you use more custom parts and delve into modern manufacturing techniques and materials you can probably build a lighter, stiffer, less compromised car, but possibly at the expense of testing time. If you can adequately justify your decision to go either way (or somewhere in the middle) then you should do well in design, and if your justification was sound then you should do well in the dynamic events too. If you do poorly then maybe you need to re-evaluate because it probably suggests the benefits you expected to get from the path you chose were overestimated or just plain wrong http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[VFR750R]

Manufacturability is worth a percentage of the 150 points designated to design. Since no team comes with a true go kart, teams rarely get the max points alloted for manufacturability, but no team comes with a design that is unmanufacturable either, so no one gets zero points. There are no points awarded for cost in design. Once teams make it to finals, manufacturability is rarely considered as to which team wins design. Team knowledge carries more weight in finals.

Also, not pointed towards you but I saw considerable backlash on the competition thread. No judge feels comfortable penalizing a team who was able to build an F1 car with their F1 budget, nor inflating a teams score that did the best they could with a meager budget but whose car is just not as good. This isn't the US government, this is racing.

I think students spend a lot of time trying to figure the judges out when it's really very simple. There is no such thing as brownie points, judges just want to see well thought out systems engineered cars that have been optimized for all 'and only' the applicable variables, and students that truly understand what they've built. Judges don't speak in the language of excuses; judges like data points, not sales points. There's difference between selling your design, and explaining your design.

[BeaverGuy]

These types of posts are always interesting. Even within my team when I was still in Uni, we had this discusion. Where we fell at the time was that composite monocoques were outside of our means and unreasonable to be repaired. Obviously the current team has taken a different direction as witnessed by their first year monocoque. And I think they have succesfully shown that it is possible to repair a composite carbon structure that has been compromised.

Also, both Boeing and Airbus are now widely using composite strucutres in areas that are prone to flight damage. While the 787 has not yet flown, several current aircraft use composites in the external structures of the aircraft. This has neccesitated the development of field repair kits for the composites just as they have repair kits for the Aluminum structure. The same can be done for a race car chassis if you understand your potential modes of failure and the materials you are working with.

On the topic of buy vs. build it is a touchy situation even in the real world. It is one of the most common things that comes up where I work. The reality of it in this type of situation is that you need to balance it. A customer will almost always want a part to be off the shelf. While for the person manufacturing the equipment using a bespoke part can often be better. A bespoke part when bought in the quantities dealt with at my company often falls on the edge of cheaper or more expensive than off the shelf. If everything I made was in the quantity of 1000 as opposed to 25-200 then bespoke parts would usually break even or be cheaper to make than off the shelf parts are to buy. In that situation a manufacturer is better off making bespoke parts both because it is cheaper during the initial manufacture, but also because they get to sell spare parts. The downside is the customer now has to maintain spares if the bespoke part is one that is prone to failure.

[Hector]

Here's how I think of it:

Throw the whole "weekend autocross" mindset out. Throw it away. It's garbage.

That may have been the original intent of the rules. It still says it in the rules. It's not true.

No team that has won design since I've been around has had anything close to a weekend autocross vehicle.

The F1 teams will continue to win, and shouldn't they? They manage to get the best budget, best technology, implement it well, and have fast cars (or sometimes just pro drivers). Sound like real winners to me.

[AwesomeAlvin]

Thanks a lot for the comments guys, this has straighten out some things in my head. However my question really comes down to
____________________
Can and team with a budget of $50 000, 300hrs of machining time, and no access to composite facilities win design finals??
_____________________

From what I can see in the short two years of my FSAE experience, high budget teams that run an “exotic” car has greatly improved and has gotten far more "exotic". While the low budget teams that run the traditional spaceframe and hand shifter havent moved at all. The gap between the teams is just getting larger and larger.

What bugs me is not cause the high budget team are not getting punished for not following the "weekend autocross racer" theme, but is due to the fact that the low budget team who is only capable of making a "weekend autocross racer" is not rewarded for their efforts.

AA

[MalcolmG]

Stuttgart did incredibly well last year, including numerous design wins, with a car that didn't have anything that should really be out of reach of most teams - they had a pneumatic shifter, some nice cast aluminium uprights, and carbon wheels; but I doubt the results would've been much different without those items.

By the way, $50,000USD is considerably more than our budget, our total sponsored machining time (including work done by the Engineering Dept machine shop) would be under 300hrs, and last year we still managed to build a car which features a number of things that are above the basics, and pay the costs of competing overseas (no competition in NZ!), and the only extra advantage we have is a sponsor who supplies us free autoclave time (but in the past we used to make all our composite parts with wet layups or resin infusion). We came second in design in Australia last year (to Stuttgart), so I don't think you need a massive budget to succeed in design. I'm not sure if we would have done as well in a bigger competition, but I think it's a good start.

My theory is this: well organised teams are probably able to make a stronger push for sponsors, and therefore get more money. Not coincidentally, these well organised teams also have a logical design approach that entails putting a lot of analysis into their designs and their decision making processes(which is a good start to doing well in design). Their organisation extends to being prepared for static events (which is the big secret - we went from 12th to 2nd in design at Aus in 1 year by being considerably better prepared), which means they do well in design.

I know what it's like to despair about perceived disadvantages in the design event, but if you can create a sound justification for your designs to yourself then there's a very good chance you can convince the judges too. How many months out from the competition do you do you first practice for design event? And on how many separate occasions do you do practice presentations and simulated events? If the answer to either of those questions is less than 4 or 5 then I'd suggest rethinking your strategy

[exFSAE]

You're designing a car to score the most points at a FSAE competition. Pure and simple. Going along with Hector... forget the weekend autocross thing.

Having seen 5 years of competitions and observed a number of teams... a lot really comes down to being the least shitty. It's all relative. It's not that judges don't like simple practical things. In 2002 or 2003, some relatively simple cars were probably the least poorly designed ("best") of the lot. Many teams have moved beyond that.

'Exotic' does not win design. Well-engineered does. I used to think fancy crap would score well in design, but it doesn't. Engineering merit and data are where it's at. That can be a simple solution or a really wild one. If someone uses flexure suspension joints, or built their own shocks.. or even just use a trick off-the-shelf shock... big deal. Who cares, unless there's a good reason behind it. Show me why damper curve X is required for your car, in a transient vehicle model (or whatever you want to use to justify it). Show me the design alternatives, and show me which one best met your requirement. Show me the data that shows it performed as expected. That's what judges want to see.

With regard to monocoques though, there is a bit more to it than just the build cost. Sure you can build something out of carbon for relatively cheap. But, as was said the tooling cost is high. This is FSAE, so it is a one-off. The engineering cost is also probably much higher than a tube frame... between analysis required for accurate analysis and design with varying ply orientations, and time behind the computer. I wish this was also included in the cost event, though it would be impossible to track.

I really don't think you need a fancy car to win the competition. Even the real trick 'super' teams these days that perform really well.. there's still plenty of untapped room above them that's up for grabs by anyone.

So to answer your most recent question Alvin, "Can and team with a budget of $50 000, 300hrs of machining time, and no access to composite facilities win design finals??" YES. Absolutely. That's actually quite a bit of cash.. a shitload really.. and a lot of machine time. I machined the majority of the parts on the car by a fair margin and only came to ~180 hours, including programming and setup where applicable. That includes custom wheel centers, billet uprights, billet 4130 hubs, etc. And I coulda been going faster http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Comes down to the people. I'd bet that a team of 6 alums could do it and crush the static and dynamic events. I even know who I'd pick. Wouldn't be fair, but again that's the point that it comes down to the people and the knowledge.

Of course, that's just my opinion.

[BeaverGuy]

$50,000 is a high budget team. Structural composites certainly aren't neccesary. From the picturse I saw, RIT was a steel frame car. Also, from the limited information that I have, the steel frame car that OSU ran last year was only 60 lbs heavier than their carbon car this year. That weight difference can be entirely contributed to the engine change, last year they were running a 4cyl and this year a single. I also don't think that their physical perfromance is all that different between the two cars.

The big difference in their performance was an increase in knowledge and preparation. Every year I was involved with the team and the 3 years since I graduated the knowldege and organization has generally increased on the team. Early in my involvement there was some thoughts amongst our team that it was what you had that mattered. At the '04 competition it became blatantly apparent that how you present your car and how well you know it is far more important. We made a huge step in '05 and they have continued to build on it since then. A car with design compromises but with lots of good reasoning and understanding will do better in design than a perfectly designed car that is not understood. In order to do well in design you need to bring both to the table and present it in a coherent cohesive manner so that the judges understand that you know what you are doing.

Regarding the "weekend autocross racer", the reason FSAE cars don't look like a typical autocross car is because a typical autocross car isn't made by people with access to equipment typical of what a manufacturer might have. Most FSAE cars are built by groups that have access to equipment typical of what a manufacturer making 1000 of these per year might have. Look at the manufacturer produced D sports racers for an idea of what might happen if a manufacturer actually produced turnkey autocross cars.

[Whis]

Well. Just to be annoying and point something out. This isn't what I suppose would be called a "typical" weekend racer, but it comes very close and a very large amount of people are using it just for that reason.

Stohr WF1 (http://www.stohrcars.com/f1000build.php)

And actually, if you want the F1000 car, its cheaper. The WF1 is $59000 for a rolling chassis. The F1000 is $39900. The point is, yeah, its not built in a garage but it is the current state of the art and if you want a weekend racer but didn't want to throw it together in your garage you'd buy something like this or similar. And these are fairly similar to a High Budget FSAE car. This is your goal. You want to build a easy- to- manufacture, well designed weekend racer using the current state of the art. Carbon is that. CNC aluminum is that. Yeah, you can't really make that in your garage with your 110 volt welder and 2 axis bridgeport mill. But you can't win with that garage built car either and you sure as hell couldn't/ wouldn't do the testing and data acquisition required to win if your weren't willing to send stuff out for CNC'ing and carbon manufacturing.

I think its just welcome to 2009. The age of tinkering in a home garage is over. Gotta send stuff out to the guys who have the machinery you can't afford.

[flavorPacket]

This is the first really good thread I've seen in a while, good job guys.

The teams that win competitions act like racing teams with a driver training program, NOT like weekend autocross car manufacturers. There is a reason for that. They succeed at achieving every possible advantage over other teams, whether that comes in the form of weight, driver talent, money, stiffness, power, etc.

If you are building a car to make 1000 of each year, just give up on trying to win. There's nothing wrong with that goal, but it will not win you the competition.

Regarding winning design, I disagree with exFSAE. Maybe in 2003 you could win design with a simple car, but the head design judge at MIS this year said in the design review that ETS had the car the judges would want to buy, but they gave 1st place to TUG because it's fancier. This is a clear indication that teams need to push the limit in terms of technology to succeed.

When giving design feedback, our judge told us to 'have an active diff' (this is a direct quote) or make our own ECU (we run the most advanced ECU in the series that no student could ever beat). From this experience, it became clear to me that the judges are increasingly looking for fancy shit rather than thorough engineering. Frankly, it's pathetic.

And while we're on the subject, let's not ignore the fact that many teams the thread maker would call 'exotics' are mainly composed of 22-26 yr olds who take off from classes to work on FSAE. When most everyone is an undergrad 18-22 yr old who has to balance school and racing, it's a slap in the face to see what are essentially young professionals beating us in the design event and on track. I can assure you that the 25 yr olds who were on my team are now working on real race cars that win LeMans, Cup, etc. They are NOT beating up on kids who are just learning what engineering is. And kudos to teams like UMR and RIT who keep these guys honest and show what a well integrated, well tested undergrad-built car can do.

[Bemo]

I don't really understand people complainig that judges would only recommend the most tricky carbon cars.
For example the discussion about monocoques. I can't see if judges prefer them or not. Last year several design events were won by space frame cars and several by monocoque cars. As said above it's about to justify your design. A well engineered space frame will always be better than a bad monocoque.
Same for all the other fancy stuff. If you just have it but you don't understand it, you won't get any credit by the judges.
And telling a judge that your opinion is that a fancy solution is too expensive will count as a good point, if you really thought it through.
I also want to say, that it is possible to build a car that is competitive while reliable enough to run several weekends in a row. Our old cars are all still running. Of course sometimes something has to be repaired but that's normal also for a normal autocross racer.
Reliabilty is the most important point for both the autocross racer and for a competitive FSAE car. I think you will always be better up if you build a simple car and finish it early than building a fancy car and don't manage to finish it in time. So I think that winning competitions and building cars suitable for amateur autocross racers can definitely go together.

[Wesley]

Originally posted by Hector:
No team that has won design since I've been around has had anything close to a weekend autocross vehicle.


Our 2007 car won design. We regularly use it for SCCA events, and it is competitive, light, simple, and easy.

Our 2006 car has gotten second at SCCA Nats, and is still running in competition trim, with the only changes being oil and more fuel.

Our 2008 car (Third in West) Is still running as it was in competition, and has been to numerous SCCA events.

2009 was also designed for the weekend autocross - because we like to drive it there, and if the judges don't like that we don't particularly care. We design it for a weekend autocrosser, and whether or not we win design, as long as we've benefited from the competition in the way that we see fit, then we're satisfied. Just as the judges look for certain criteria in a car for them to place more weight on it's design, we look for certain criteria in competition that we care about. If it doesn't fit our design plan and team goals, we'll just skip that part. So long as we're rules compliant, we'd much rather make a car that we would teach us engineering and have fun driving than would win design.

[VFR750R]

I think my response was mis-understood, although I can't seem to see how it was. I didn't say judges prefer simple designs. What I was getting at is they don't care how complicated the car is, they only car about how fast the car is. If a seemingly simple design creates a super fast car, they'll know.

I think technology and doing well in design don't correlate to each other but both correlate to the best teams. A simple example is to give the TU graz car to a few high school kids and see if they make secondary. You could also imagine an opposite scenario where a bunch of alumni could create a 'simple' car, but be able to talk at the same level as the judges and make it to semis if not finals.

And in just 2007 didn't Texas A&M win with a 'simple' tube frame car with minimal bling? Doesn't mean it could still happen, but that's a lot more recent then 2003.

[exFSAE]

Originally posted by VFR750R:
A simple example is to give the TU graz car to a few high school kids and see if they make secondary. You could also imagine an opposite scenario where a bunch of alumni could create a 'simple' car, but be able to talk at the same level as the judges and make it to semis if not finals.

Agree 100%. The latter would be kinda fun, though completely unfair and pointless.

[AwesomeAlvin]

Thanks a lot for the comment guys, I never thought that I would receive this many comments for this thread. I just want to comment that the weekend autocross racer is not only reliable easy to maintain. (As shown by all the evidence of the running old cars teams are running etc etc). The number 1 priority is the cost, money is everything.

Everyone knows there is a BS cost report cost for the car, and a true cost that is embedded within our heart. If there is a simple spaceframe car that has 90% the performance of a fancy monocoque that come in at 25% of its price, I think the simple spaceframe car is by FAR FAR the better "weekend autocross racer". (Just a note I don't think 25% of the cost is exaggerated).

So far I have gotten the following conclusion

***** “Prototype Weekend Autocross Racer” theme is unofficially scrapped by both the teams AND static event judges. We are designing/building a car to compete in the FSAE competition.

***** There would never ever, be an underdog in the design event. Maybe in the past, but not anymore. Teams with limited budget, facilities and experience (garage cars) would never ever win design.

Like I said before, I belong to a team that is run by only undergrads doing full course load and incapable of building an “exotic” car at the moment. Therefore I am most likely bias towards the less “exotic” cars.

AA

[Zac]

***** There would never ever, be an underdog in the design event. Maybe in the past, but not anymore. Teams with limited budget, facilities and experience (garage cars) would never ever win design.

What are you defining as an underdog? A team that builds a spaceframe car without a lot of bell and whistles or a team that doesn't fully understand their car?

Teams with relatively simple cars have made it to design finals in the past 3-4 years. Just look at RIT, Penn State, and even Stuttgart. Outside of the welded ti suspension bits on the PSU car,(which really aren't an impossibility for another team to do, and might not even be a good idea) there really isn't anything particularly "fancy" about those cars.

Granted there's a fair amount of luck in which design judges you pull, but by and large the teams that do well in design are the teams that do a good job of managing their program and defending their design decisions. The teams that don't do well in design usually either have something glaringly wrong with their car or don't spend enough time preparing for the static events.

[exFSAE]

***** There would never ever, be an underdog in the design event. Maybe in the past, but not anymore. Teams with limited budget, facilities and experience (garage cars) would never ever win design.

Opposite. I feel entirely confident I could start a team with some friends, at a community college, and make it to design semis, design finals, or just outright win.. with the first car.. using no Ti, and no carbon. Probably be a 2 year project, admittedly.

It's all about KNOWLEDGE, and proper use of real engineering design, application, and analysis. Admittedly if we started a team of alums from pro motorsport they all have specialized knowledge, but consider that "industry mentoring" in your case.

Racecar engineering is really NOT that trick, once you figure out how to break it down. YOUR team could certainly win design. You've just got to establish a good knowledge retention program so you can continue to build on past experience every year... and a good project timeline and budget management system to include some level of year-round design and testing.

[flavorPacket]

exFSAE, I have to disagree. Would your simple car kick ass? Without a doubt. But I doubt it would win design.

My alumni friends and I have discussed this at length. Simply reducing the amount of bullshit you deal with, let alone increasing the quality of the car, would make any team much faster.

BUT, the judges are starting to give points more for what you do, than for how you do it. If you don't do something really impressive, you won't win design. Every car in finals has something to really impress the judges, whether it's TUG's chassis and motor, UAS's motor, ETS's chassis and ergo, PSU's weight. I'd bet you make semifinals, though.

[Thrainer]

Originally posted by AwesomeAlvin:
... Teams with limited budget, facilities and experience (garage cars) would never ever win design. ...

I have yet to see an FSAE team that does NOT have limited budget, limited facilities and limited experience. Why do so many people think "the other teams" are limited less, working less hard etc.? This is coming up in every other thread. I'm still not sure if this is mere ignorance or jealousy, or a combination of both.
I just don't believe there is a formula student team whose car does not break down during testing. After all, we are not engineers (yet) and the cars are self-made prototypes. It is your job to break the car and fix it BEFORE competition. Good teams even manage to break the car during competition and still do good.

If it takes 300% more budget to get 10% performance increase (which is not realistic, but anyway), then that is your job if you want to do well: Get more sponsors. The car with 10% more points is still the better car by the rules.

On the subject of design event judging: I'm assuming that the judges are allotted to the teams based on their design report. It would make sense that the prospective design finalists are assessed by the same judges. Can somebody back this up or deny it?

Thomas

[flavorPacket]

Thomas, everything is relative. And you're right, it definitely comes down to jealousy. I would love to have 45 team members, 20 of whom don't go to school for a year to do FSAE. But that's not possible, and it has nothing to do with budget, motivation, innate ability, etc.

The competition is supposed to be for students. If you are not attending classes, how are you a student? The way I see it, if a team functions in this way, they should have to compete against professionals, because that's how they are organized.

[exFSAE]

Originally posted by flavorPacket:
exFSAE, I have to disagree. Would your simple car kick ass? Without a doubt. But I doubt it would win design.

My alumni friends and I have discussed this at length. Simply reducing the amount of bullshit you deal with, let alone increasing the quality of the car, would make any team much faster.

BUT, the judges are starting to give points more for what you do, than for how you do it. If you don't do something really impressive, you won't win design. Every car in finals has something to really impress the judges, whether it's TUG's chassis and motor, UAS's motor, ETS's chassis and ergo, PSU's weight. I'd bet you make semifinals, though.

Eh. Maybe 'simple' wasn't the best word, but 'non-exotic' and not outrageously expensive.If (practical reasons aside) Claude, Doug Milliken, Mark Ortiz, and some guys out of the Renault F1 aero and engine shops got together, were given $30000, and told to design and build a FSAE car... do you think they could put together a car and presentation that would win finals? I think so.

Obviously no team of undergrads is going to have that level of experience and knowledge right off the bat or ever. But over the course of 3, 5, or 10 years if a team really focuses to retain and transfer the knowledge they gain, you can put together really impressive work.

Plus, no team or group of teams stays on top forever. While still good programs, Cornell and UTA are great examples.

[Moke]

How is designing and building a monocoque any less "engineering" than a space frame? And would what the students learn be less useful in their professional lives? Composites are not going away, more and more will be made using them so would learning how to design and manufacture composites not be worthwhile?

As one that took lighter years (1 or 2 papers less) to work on FSAE I feel that I was still a student and fully entitled to be part of the program. Our team has a focus on having students from all years and what year you are has no bearing on your standings in the team, we've had a 2nd year team leader, 2nd chassis leader. The key is making sure knowledge is carried over.

[flavorPacket]

Originally posted by exFSAE:

Eh. Maybe 'simple' wasn't the best word, but 'non-exotic' and not outrageously expensive.If (practical reasons aside) Claude, Doug Milliken, Mark Ortiz, and some guys out of the Renault F1 aero and engine shops got together, were given $30000, and told to design and build a FSAE car... do you think they could put together a car and presentation that would win finals? I think so.

Maybe. It's apples to oranges. And I don't think they could. On 30k you are not getting good data acq, good CAE, transient dynos, K/C rigs, shaker rigs, etc. Maybe the top teams don't pay for these things, but they have some of them. A well-sorted, well-tested cheap car still cannot beat a well-sorted, well-tested million dollar car.

Look at Dearborn as a great example. They're fast, yes, but they cannot win as of now.

[MalcolmG]

Originally posted by AwesomeAlvin:
Like I said before, I belong to a team that is run by only undergrads doing full course load and incapable of building an “exotic” car at the moment. Therefore I am most likely bias towards the less “exotic” cars.

AA

I hear a lot of excuses like this coming from people and I think it's BS. Our team has only ever had 2 postgrads in it in the 6 years we've been building cars, and only one of them was doing a thesis related to the car. Everyone on our team since 2007 has been an undergrad doing a full course load* and we still manage to explore less common technologies. We're not winning events yet but we've certainly improved in the last couple of years, and my experience tells me that what you can achieve is all to do with the planning, organisation and passion within the team. Rather than being negative and going on about what your team can't do and the excuses for why, how about being more positive and ambitious and trying something different? I guess it all depends on what your team's motives/goals are.


* - except the occasional member finishing off a couple of papers or dropping 1 paper for the semester

[exFSAE]

Originally posted by Moke:
How is designing and building a monocoque any less "engineering" than a space frame?

It is no more, it is no less.

[Thrainer]

Originally posted by flavorPacket:
... If you are not attending classes, how are you a student?

What if you get credit points for being part of FSAE?
If you haven't graduated, you are a student.



Originally posted by exFSAE:
... Claude, Doug Milliken, Mark Ortiz, and some guys out of the Renault F1 aero and engine shops got together, were given $30000, and told to design and build a FSAE car... do you think they could put together a car and presentation that would win finals? I think so. ...

I'd say each one of them would spend 30k and they could win Design in Italy http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Umm, what was the subject of this thread again?

[flavorPacket]

Thrainer, that's a ridiculous statement. So you're saying that my 52 yr old father who never finished his master's is still a student?

Getting back on topic, this competition was not conceived to be a racing series, but that is how a team must treat it in order to succeed. Successful teams (from a competition performance standpoint) act like race teams first and student groups second. Is this what we are supposed to learn in FSAE? I'm skeptical.

[Wesley]

I was talking with some of the design judges, and for the most part, design queues are assigned based on the design reports - they are assigned a letter grade, and then the queues are designed so each one has a good and even scale of report scores to make them even.

In the past 3 years of competitions, I agree that I have seen the judges make a transition from a solid well-designed and thought out car earning points to one that has some fancy widgets, or some form of interesting testing (sometimes at the loss of other, more basic design issues,) and I do think that there is a certain amount of snobbery in the competitions - if you go to West, you will not earn full design points, regardless of whether or not you WOULD be competitive internationally.

Claude has told us (and told us this in 2007 and 2008) that, while we did well (1st in design and 3rd overall respectively) that we should remember that "this isn't Formula Germany." I agree with him that generally the caliber of those competitions is higher, but at the same time, the number of teams that can attend is limited by budget - only the very well organized and larger teams attend, eliminating the lower class.

I was talking with a truly low-budget team in competition, and it astounded me that they could even build a car and get to competition on their funding. It was somewhat humbling.

I know that every team, even Graz, will say "I wish we had more money for x sensor or y electronics or z carbon fiber" it's part of having constraints, part of having any sort of budget, and part of engineering.

It's easy to feel like you're being victimized and underrated as a team (our team sometimes feels this way, especially considering our performance level) but we realize after interaction with some of the other teams that - yes our knowledge is sufficient. Yes, we've done the testing, we've had the 4 months of test time that many other teams haven't done - we had a running car months before the competition winners - but we're not that great at showing it.

Working on our presentation skills is paramount - showing the judges that, despite our mediocre build quality, we have done our homework. It's all in how you approach the judges, and now that I'm going out I may try to write a guideline of "judge rules" for future team members. If you just let the judges look at your work, they're missing the most important part of your design - the data that validates it. Show them that you have it, show them you've used it, and show them that the data has made and makes your car a performing car.

Teach them your design, don't show it to them.

[fixitmattman]

I think some people are forgetting some things here. Half the competition is actually selling your design, whatever it may be. Just like in the real world money talks. There are a million ways of making any widgit on any of our cars all of which affect the bottom line. Often these choices are only limited by a teams (or in the real world a companies) manufacturing resources. There are always ways around this say through outsourcing but it may be costly. However in any design material is usually only a fraction of the total part cost. If a team can affordably control the whole part process to create a competitively costed car using exotic materials or processes why not? These are the things that go on in industry and are the sorts of engineering design decisions we will be expected to make in industry. The whole point of the competition is to get us familiar with these circumstances.

IMO you can still be competitive with a tube frame chassis. We had a tube frame and a HEAVY car and finished 27th in endurance and 43rd overall.

It was our first entrance ever and we were flat broke half the time.


The fancy materials don't make the car, it's good design.

[kapps]

I think it boils down to what kind of team you are. My background involves a team that operates on a $5k budget from the school and another $2k if we're lucky from sponsors (plus whatever we put into it ourselves). We aren't an 'established' team; prior to the '08 competition, we didn't have a car since '03. The one thing we do have is a decent machine shop and a few very dedicated members. Obviously, it is easier for us to build a spaceframe chassis that doesn't require every single part to be placed in the model prior to chassis fabrication.

Teams that lay up carbon fiber may get more experience with modeling and finalizing a design before fabrication but spaceframe teams are going to get more actual real-world fabrication experience IMO. Considering most work nowadays still involves metal, a spaceframe chassis is more applicable to the industry. There is a place for carbon fiber but it's just not widely used in most industries.

The same argument splits the spaceframe teams between those who send the model of their frame out and get it back in pieces that are already cut/coped and ready to weld once fixtured; and pay a welder to come out add weld it for them. We buy tube in full sticks. Then cut, bend, cope, and TIG weld it ourselves. We are getting much more actual fabrication experience. Now some may think that this isn't very applicable to an Engineer (that's what technicians and fabricators are for, right?) but isn't the whole idea about this competition to get experience that will help you in industry. By doing all of this ourselves, we know exactly what the capabilities are for these manufacturing processes. I'm a better designer because of it.

Similar with CNC machining. We have an old 3-axis CNC and I use it for all it's worth. Many teams model a part and send it out to be made without really understanding the fixturing and thought that goes into actually making it. When I model a part, I'm constantly thinking about how I'm going to hold it and how to minimize the number of setups and tools used because I'm the one who's going to be making the part (something your boss is really going to like). I take pride in knowing I can talk to a machinist and have a perfectly normal conversation about how he plans on making a part. I also believe CNC machining is a viable manufacturing technique for mass production. Just look at the bottom shell of the new Apple laptops. Same thing with casting. We don't cast anything but some guys on our Baja team just finished a Sr. Design project on casting a gearbox case. They ended up casting hubs and a few other things too. They came out great except for some crappy final machining they did on the manual mill. I'm a bit wary of using cast parts on our car because it takes a lot of effort to get it right, and then have to finish it off on the CNC. There's a reason production parts are made like this while 1sies and 2sies are machined from billet.

The way the cost rules are made, it is cheaper to make a monocoque. If that's the reality, why aren't there any monocoques in production? Because when you hit something, it's totaled. In the mid-60's, Lotus had structural fiberglass bonded to a steel backbone frame. After a couple years, they started bolting it because every little fender bender resulted in major repairs. It doesn't seem like judges in FSAE understand this fact. Even for a weekend auto-xer, your going to hit something eventually.

[BeaverGuy]

Shaun,

Regarding the perfect moddeling vs. getting it close, I am of the opinion that what ever you are modelling you should model it to completion and include every detail that you can. The benefit of this is that there is less time fitting in the end. It also means that it is more likely to function as inteneded when you assemble it.

Where I work, I am not only responsible for what I design but I also must assemble the final product. On my first real project, I was careful to model the fasteners, clearance around welds, and the assembly tools, and double checked the mating hole patterns. As a result I didn't have to make any modifications and everything whent together much quicker than the project manager had planned for. However, before I even got to assemble my parts, I had to assemble the parts of a coworker. He was not nearly as dilligent and as a result it took far longer than neccesary because nearly every part had to be custom fit. A common phrase where I work is, "1 hour here, is 2 hours in the field." This holds for when you assemble the car as well. A design that is complete in CAD and assembly checked there as well, will save you time.

[Moke]

Originally posted by exFSAE:
It is no more, it is no less.

Thats my point


Originally posted by kapps:
Considering most work nowadays still involves metal, a spaceframe chassis is more applicable to the industry. There is a place for carbon fiber but it's just not widely used in most industries.

This is a common misconception, nearly every new car has composites in it eg: dash, ute trays, boot lids and linings, truck trailers, frontal impact structures. New aircraft are consisting of more composite parts. Bridges and buildings are using composites to reduce weight and increase stiffness. The clay pipes under the road are being replaced with fibreglass.

Once upon a time steel was a new material and there would have been people saying "Bah that fool is using steel to make a boat, wood is better and more applicable" or "A steel framed building, what are you mad? Use brick"

If you ignore new technologies you'll end up like Polaroid


Originally posted by kapps:
If that's the reality, why aren't there any monocoques in production? Because when you hit something, it's totaled.

The company I work for has repair crashed "production" monocoque formula Toyota race cars (made by Tatuus in Italy). The repair steps are the same as for a space frame, cut out the damage, glue in a patch, good as new if not better (thicker laminate). I even cut one in half and added a second seat.

There will always be teams that have "better/different" resources than other teams. If the uni has a strong composites base the team is likely to run a monocoque; if they have a wind tunnel, wings; free cro-mo, a space frame; Australian, they'll steal a car and a loaf of bread. You need to work with what you have to produce the best car you can

Times have changed, an entry level car now comes with things like air con, EFI, ABS, traction control, stability control, alloys, CD/MP3, 50 million airbags. These were once high end but now are expected. Race cars should evolve at a similar rate if not faster. With the boom of low production track cars such as the nobles, a car needs to stand out and attract buyers in order to sell, technology is one such way. Watch Top Gear and see how often some new tech is mentioned.

In my opinion the aim should still be to make/design a prototype autocross race car but for a modern autocross racer.

[Big Bird]

Some interesting comments and arguments above. Just a few comments if I may as a long time observer.

The old “it is tougher now than it was 5 years ago” argument.
I looked at the results from the 2009 California event, and found the following winning times/scores
Skid Pad: around 5.0 seconds
Acceleration: around 4.0 seconds
Fuel Economy: around 3 litres
Number of teams completing all events – 37.5%

The first fully dry event I competed in was FSAE Australia 2003, and the comparable winning results were as follows:
Skid Pad: around 5.0 seconds
Acceleration: around 4.0 seconds
Fuel Economy: around 3 litres
Number of teams completing all events – around 30-40%

I’ve observed or competed in around 10 events, and have seen stuff-all variance in these values (except fuel economy, down to around 2.5 litres at times). You can’t directly compare Autocross and Endurance, (different tracks obviously), but I’ve seen nothing to convince me that UWA 2005-2006 was any better than Wollongong 2002, or Texas A&M 2006, or any other quick and well prepared team I have seen.

The competition hasn’t changed, although maybe we want to believe it has.

Engineering analysis:
If I may refer back to the original poster’s argument, where it seems the argument is being that they cannot compete with the “exotic” teams. I mean this as no personal slight against AwesomeAlvin, because I can certainly understand the underlying concern, but it is worth looking a little closer at the logic of the argument.

It seems RIT has won the West event on 885 points. I don’t consider them to have an “exotic” car, but for the sake of the argument we’ll pretend they are one of these supposedly “privileged” teams with huge budget, carbon tub, fancy bits, whatever. (BTW, congrats to them for a well deserved win). Picking some figures out of the air I’ll estimate their car weighs 190kg, and puts out around 60kW.

Now let’s just say my team is one of these “home garage” teams, and can’t possibly build anything exotic. We have the same engine as the wonder-team, but given the constraints of a steel spaceframe and lack of dyno, lets say that the best we feel can achieve over the year is a 220kg car, and 50kW output. As an engineer the first thing I need to do is rough out some calcs to see how much penalty I am at compared to the “exotic” team.

Now I’ve been playing around with some reasonably simple Excel lapsims that compare different concepts against each other in a two car dynamic “competition”, based on some old trackmaps. They are rough, but seem to match up to within a second or so of the actual competition times so they are good enough for a start. If I compare the two above concepts over all events, the difference between the 190kg 60kW supercar and the 220kg 50kW farm truck works out to around 35 points across the dynamic events. Say I’m feeling pessimistic about my lapsim, so I’ll round it up to 50 points. So if my underprivileged team executes the vehicle to the same level of preparation as the supercar, then dynamically the potential of the design itself is worth around a 50 point penalty to us.

I’ll assume that the guy doing the cost report is a complete moron and the best he can salvage for us is a 5 point bonus compared to the carbon/titanium wondercar.

Now, two scenarios:
Scenario 1: The Design judges are wonderfully understanding people and judge you equivalently competent as the wondercar engineers. The two teams score equal points in Design
Scenario 2: The Design Judges know you are competent engineers, but they all share a deeply ingrained aversion to mild steel, after the childhood trauma of having their teddy bears stolen and replaced by lengths of 25x25 RHS. You score 50 points less in design than the supercar team.

Given all the above, an equally well prepared backyard team could expect to finish somewhere between 45 and 95 points behind the winning “wonder-team”. That means a range of 790-840 points in the competition we are talking about, or somewhere between 3rd and 6th place overall. And in most cases above I've tended towards worst case, and haven't made any allowances for gains that could be made elsewhere.

So as politely as I can say it, the reason Alvin’s team finished in 11th place wasn’t just because of lack of privilege. I won’t speculate on exact reasons, but if you are finishing under 800 points you don't have a car problem.

Mind games
Teams like UWA and TU Graz have played this game well not only because have they produced incredibly well-engineered vehicles, but they have psychologically conned their competition into believing that you to match all their exotic stuff to be competitive. So the teams that try often fail (blowing out budgets, taking on technologies that they cannot implement, etc), and the teams that don’t try feel demoralized and take their mind off their own game.

After Formula Student in 2006, there was all this uproar about the “mini-F1” Graz carbon car, that came second overall (from memory). There were all these cries of “we can’t compete”. When I compared the sum dynamic scores across Accel / Fuel / Autocross / Endurance, it turns out that Dartmouth had outscored them 493 to 492 points. No-one jumps up and down and cries poor when they have to compete against Dartmouth.

If you want to succeed, play your own game. You’ll never get anywhere worrying about everyone else.

[Thrainer]

Originally posted by flavorPacket:
Thrainer, that's a ridiculous statement. So you're saying that my 52 yr old father who never finished his master's is still a student?

Getting back on topic, this competition was not conceived to be a racing series, but that is how a team must treat it in order to succeed. Successful teams (from a competition performance standpoint) act like race teams first and student groups second. Is this what we are supposed to learn in FSAE? I'm skeptical.

Are you saying that 52-year-olds (with finished gymnasium) cannot enroll at your universities or that you cannot stay enrolled while you're not getting the equivalent of 30 credit points per semester? Here, even grandfathers can be university students and it's their own choice what classes they take or not, or if they take any classes at all. After five years, you either have your degree or get kicked out.


What rule changes do you suggest to make the "group of students" more successful than the "race team"? Freeze engine development, budget limits, more points for the slower car?
Of course the organized team, the fast car, the report that was sumbitted in time, ... is successful. Is it any different in the industry?
What do you think we're supposed to learn in FSAE?

[ST]

I've always taken the comparisons to UWA and a mini F1 team as compliment.

Our chassis team uses marine grade carbon that some of the European teams wouldn't piss on, to make our molds they spend months bogging and sanding a mdf plug and go mad trying to keep dimensional accuracy. The chassis is cured in an oven down the local boat builders and smaller carbon parts are cooked in an insulated plywood box with a heat gun sitting a calibrated distance from the box to control the temperature. Never has a part in our car even seen an autoclave.

The engine team uses an old diesel dyno from the 70's with a control system that regulatory gives the operator a heart attack as it sometimes decides that 15,000 rpm is the desired engine speed.

Our kinetic suspension system that is always deemed too complicated was designed with nothing more than the patent documents (anyone else that wants to put it on their car should go for it).

The real reason these systems are designed is part of our course requires us to write up a final year project on designing parts on our car. Unfortunately the same 70 page thesis on learning how to build and tune a car can't be handed in 10 years in a row, hence development of these systems occur. There's buckets of projects from custom ECU's to magnetic clutch actuators that never got on the car because they simply were not good enough.

I do however consider our team fortunate to have the resources we do, god knows it is tough for a lot of teams out there. There is no doubt however we make the absolute most of our resources and never feel that we lost because we don't have access to titanium sintering and a transient driven dyno. Teams we really appreciate are not the ones with the trick parts on the cars but the ones that have obviously made the best engineering design in their car, ETS and our new rivals Stuttgart are examples of these.

I think the real question people should ask themselves, what do we want out of FSAE? to win or to learn about engineering.

[RacingManiac]

Great post Geoff....

No one cries about having to compete with Toronto neither, who won 2006 Formula Student(ah I love Bruntingthrope). The advantage I think Graz has over a lot of team at Michigan last 3 years, has I think little to do with the fact that they do have a supernice uber car(it helps, certainly), but to me the bigger advantage is that they have an old car. For us from Toronto this point was always pretty obvious because we always tend to have an easier time when we go on the European swing. You just tend to have less to worry about because your car is sorted, you know you can finish, you fixed that thing that kept breaking in MI, and you are just there to execute your gameplan. Graz has a car thats almost a year old, had tons of miles under their belt with really well practiced and trained drivers. They also get a lot more time to polish their presentation and refined their reports. All those guarantee they can do well on any given competitions, student based, racing teams, or not. Is it an unfair advantage? Not really, its really just how this whole thing is structured globally, the timing of the things and how it worked out. The goal of the competition is to score the most points out of 1000, regardless of building a prototype uber-mobile or a car that embraces the KISS principle, if it helps you to have a car that finishes months ahead, and that better be what you focus on. If it helps to set your goal to go to Australia first and kick arse in MI, than you can do that too.....

[Bemo]

As I mentioned before there are a lot of recent examples for space frame cars winning design. At FSG last year the top3 in design were space frame cars!
I can't see that judges prefer one of the concepts (as I mentioned before). You must choose a concept, realize it well and present it well.

And of course FSAE is a design competition. The task is to build a race car. To do well you need a good organization. The team who manages that task best wins. I don't see why it should be a problem that teams work very professional.

[Mike Cook]

Good insight Geoff.

In Maryland's first year we were a 99th place team. In four more years I brought them up to a 1st place team. There was never anything exotic about our cars. They were always over weight and under powered and I don't think we were ever uncompetetive. So lets dismiss the idea that you need to be tu graz to compete and be fast.

In addition, if you build a car that you want to build - and what I mean by this, is, don't build it to win design, just build it to satisfy yourself - you will probably end up with a lot more knowledge and reasoning for the way things are on the car which will ultimately pay off in design.

[Thomas MuWe]

I just would like to remember that Penn State was in the Design finals in MI with a really simple but good design and a great knowledge about their car.

And being fast is not everything. Fuel economy will change Formula S. Take McGill in MI. They have the same engine as our jr08 but no supercharger. They won Economy and although we were much faster (in the damp)they finished EnduEco in front of us because our engine was thirsty. :-)

In my team there were people which wanted all the fancy stuff such as electro pneumatic shifting, launch control, driver controlled ARB, adjustable steering position, HUD, etc.
At the beginning I agreed we would need these things if we would like to win. It is easy to agree when someone in your team says, if we would have a electro pneumatic shifting system we would shift 1/10 of a second faster. But with this system some problems occur (how much compressed air do I need, how long do I need ignition cut, where to place the shifting mechanism, how do I control the shifting actuation, what if the system fails - ask Kalsruhe :-) etc.).

But it is much more difficult to decide to go the easy way and (!) engineer it well and with care. Maybe you loose some time on the track to the exotic car because you do not have pneumatic shifting but the "exotic car team" needs time to apply it on the car and loose testing time for driver training etc.(that is what the guy which wanted the pneumatic shifting did not tell the team). If you all would know how much fancy things we considered to have in the jr08evo you would probably say we are all crazy. We thought we have now one year experience and all we design for the "evo" would work from minute one. Believe me, often this is not the case. Even at all the top teams.

If you build a simple car which is completed much earlier than that one of your comp. you have a huge advantage (look at Stuttgart last year in Silverstone - 3.7(!!!!) seconds faster than the rest in Auto-X - thanks Miki http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif).

So it all comes down to where you can beat your competition and gain some points.

[MH]

(look at Stuttgart last year in Silverstone - 7(!!!!) seconds faster than the rest in Auto-X).

So it all comes down to where you can beat your competition and gain some points.

Don't over-react Thomas. It was only(!) 3.7 seconds. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif
And at FSG they were beaten by Braunschweig. (top 3 within 8/100 of a sec).

But in the end it's quite simple. Poorly designed cars will never win a decent competition. Poorly prepared and organized teams neither.

In my opinion there is no difference between a good prototype autocross racer and a competitive FSAE car.

cheers,
Miki Hegedus
Delft University of Technology

[flavorPacket]

Originally posted by Thrainer:
Are you saying that 52-year-olds (with finished gymnasium) cannot enroll at your universities or that you cannot stay enrolled while you're not getting the equivalent of 30 credit points per semester?

Not at all. What I am saying is that if you are not taking classes at the current time, why should you be considered a student? Under the current system, I could come back to my school, apply for the master's program, but then not enroll in anything and just work on FSAE. I do not think this sort of behavior was the goal of SAE when they put this series together.

I don't think there should be any rule changes, Thrainer. I just think that the organizers need to stop calling this an engineering event and start calling it a racing series. Get rid of cost, get rid of design, get rid of business. Just run the cars.

A telling example of this feeling comes from a brief conversation I had with Ross Brawn at FS2007. He came over to look at our car, and after giving it a once-over, he said, "Most of the top cars here have missed the point of the competition, but you built yours to work for a weekend racer." If we're missing the point, either the point needs to change, or we need to build different cars.

Geoff, I fully agree with you in appreciating having teams like UWA and TUG around. I love looking at their fancy parts, complex systems etc. It is great to have teams out there like that to push the limit and show what is possible. But when a design judge says, "this car is the ultimate" in a design review (referring to TUG), I ask myself, "the ultimate what?"

[Bemo]

FSAE is definitely still a design competition. You get the task to design and build a car which has to perform in certain disciplines. The TEAM with the best overall performance wins (of ourse you always need some luck). How does it come that the teams who get to the design finals usually do also well in presentation? That's the one discipline without excuses. You don't need any budget, you don't need a fast car. It's all about how good you are prepared. Perhaps because these teams are well prepared for statics in general? I think so.
Of course if your team consists of only few members, you have enough problems finishing your car at the time. But then you can't blame the competition that it's unfair that the bigger team which is well prepared earns more points. That's life. You have to do the best with what you've got.

[flavorPacket]

Originally posted by Bemo:
FSAE is definitely still a design competition.

Is it? Design is just a factor, but execution is far more important, as you and many others have said and proven, Bemo.

[RacingManiac]

Originally posted by flavorPacket:


I don't think there should be any rule changes, Thrainer. I just think that the organizers need to stop calling this an engineering event and start calling it a racing series. Get rid of cost, get rid of design, get rid of business. Just run the cars.



I think thats a bit extreme, because as you said later, stuff like design is still a factor. As is cost and presentation event. Maybe for your team that the population is all racers and engineers, but I am sure there are teams with people who comes in for business aspect or project management, and that maybe to develop a business case and managing cost was their work or project. Formula SAE to me is all encompassing because of the inclusion of the other events. Sure I think there should have some tweaking involve interms of how representative the "cost" of the vehicles are in the current breed of FSAE cars, but I think its useful thing to keep track of and be scored on, afterall, in post-grad employment, any engineering changes and design decision have to account for its cost impact.

Like Miki said earlier, there should not be any difference to a good prototype autocross car and a competitive FSAE car. If you can make your car fast you should be able to explain and defend your design about why it is fast. There does tend to be more emphasis recently on the extoic stuff, but I think it is also not a coincidence that the team with the exotic stuff can also present their design well. And adding the 2 together its hard NOT to be impressed by it. That said, I've had my shares of talking to some design finalists in the past and them not being able to explain why they did certain things, so certain bias from the judging side probably do exist.....

[JamesWolak]

Do any of us really want to be judged as a weekend auto crosser and not a FSAE car? I believe that answer is defiantly a no. The SCCA cone warriors are a breed that is far from what FSAE is or wants to be. And I don’t think any of us really design our car to be one, if we did we would all have Miata’s with trailer hitches on the back.

It comes to no surprise to me that design is always in question. As engineers we like results not opinions. No one can question lap times but everyone questions judging. We are always looking for variables that answer what the Judges want (horsepower, torsionaly rigidity, BSFC, weight, lateral g’s) but we will never all agree on what that formula is and either do the judges. I also think what judges you have, your team’s image, your universities name/location, and the mind games Geoff mentioned all come into play (and I don’t always think those help).

I don’t think the exotic (bling) factor is enough to win design. There are a lot of cars with cool widgets and CF components that don’t make it to design finals or even semis. Last I checked FEI made it to semis and didn’t have anything near exotic. They were in our lab for the two weeks before comp and I know they were well prepared and had good design data. Every time I had a question for their power train guy he had a graph, data, and a good answer. I am sure 75% of the teams cannot say they were well prepared for designs. And obviously FEI’s design was good because it got them a 10th place overall finish which is higher then most of us can say.

[flavorPacket]

Originally posted by RacingManiac:
I think thats a bit extreme, because as you said later, stuff like design is still a factor. As is cost and presentation event.

BUT, you have to have good business and design practices to be a good racing team. You just don't do it in front of judges, you do it in front of sponsors etc.

I want what James wants, a completely objective measure of performance. No BS data, no retired OEM judges, no posters and stands. And that only comes from a stopwatch.

[JamesWolak]

I know that static events will never go away but the points system is becoming ridiculous.

Presentation 75
Engineering Design 150
Cost Analysis 100

Acceleration 75
Skid-Pad 50
Fuel Economy 100


I can't believe that presentation is worth more then skid pad and as much as accel. Or that cost is worth more then accel and skid pad. This needs to change.

[Jimmy01]

I think the static events are a hugely valuable part of this competition, they definitely make you think about how and why you are building the car. Not to mention the huge amount you learn in the preparation for such events (maybe some more than others). Formula SAE is most certainly like a small business and some aspects are like a race team, but it is primarily about learning. The fact that it is like a business can only benefit us for our future careers. When I try to explain to ‘civilians’ how much I learn from fsae, I really struggle to list all the different things.

I’m not sure about everyone else, but here in New Zealand, innovation is really important to us. How do you incorporate innovation in your team? – You have to think outside the box, it could be a new management technique, a new manufacturing process, a fancy widget, etc...
To be the best in any competition, you have to have an edge on the competition, you can’t have that edge if you do everything the tried and true way. Sure, you’re more likely to finish or even be at the top of the bunch but who cares. I would rather build a car with some awesome new ideas that I helped develop than build the same car I did last year, even if it failed in competition for some reason. I know personally that I learn a huge amount from designing and building new and different things, sometimes they aren’t good enough, but then you go back to the drawing board (or implement a contingency plan).

As has been said over and over again, project management is the key to doing well in this competition. You must work hard at all aspects of the team and comp, yes this means - calling sponsors, writing newsletters, preparing a quality cost report, practising for static events,... These things can often be boring and tedious, welcome to the real world.

[Mike Cook]

James,

to further discourage you (and I'm sure I will post more about this later), our team would have scored more points if we had drove slower in endurance due to the fuel economy rule.

[Bemo]

Originally posted by JamesWolak:
I can't believe that presentation is worth more then skid pad and as much as accel. Or that cost is worth more then accel and skid pad. This needs to change.

The thing about the statics is that we are supposed to learn that every product you will ever design will need some target consumer otherwise it is worthless.
The cost event should teach us to decide if we use an expensive part if it is worth the money. Without cost event your overall performance would be improved if you have a 1000$ part that makes your car 1/100s faster.
Because of the cost event you must decide if the points you earn on the track are more than the points you lose in cost or not. Of course we all build our cars and then make the cost report, but at the comp it is still interesting to see that cars that run nearly the same lap times can cost very different. The team with the cheaper car gets more points overall and that's just fair, because if two designs work the same but one is cheaper - that one is the better design.

The statics are an important part of the whole competition. Who thinks that they are overrated hasn't really understood what FSAE is really about (in my personal opinion).

[RacingManiac]

Originally posted by flavorPacket:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by RacingManiac:
I think thats a bit extreme, because as you said later, stuff like design is still a factor. As is cost and presentation event.

BUT, you have to have good business and design practices to be a good racing team. You just don't do it in front of judges, you do it in front of sponsors etc.

I want what James wants, a completely objective measure of performance. No BS data, no retired OEM judges, no posters and stands. And that only comes from a stopwatch. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

That again goes back to the premise of the competition though, you are technically trying to get people to invest in your product, which is why you do a cost analysis, why you do a design presentation, and why you present your business case. The corporate sponsor that sponsors the "student team" is not part of the scope of the comp(although we as students outside of that hypothetical scenario needs them to survive). If you were to present a business case to a group of investor and their technical and manufacturing expert that they hired to see if it is a good investment, you would have to present and impress them, not just build a kickass car. I know its sounds ridiculous if you just want to race, but that is whats seperating Formula SAE with a random racing class in SCCA. Now the competition scoring balance can change, but I think this aspect of it should remain regardless...

There are plenty of brilliant patent or invention out there that may never see the light of day, because their owner can't effectively sell their idea to someone to invest in it. It is the fact of life....

[Discretely elite]

So who's down for starting a FSAE Racing League?

[kapps]

Originally posted by BeaverGuy:
Regarding the perfect moddeling vs. getting it close, I am of the opinion that what ever you are modelling you should model it to completion and include every detail that you can.


I agree to an extent. In my real job, we do model everything. Being able to see how everything goes together is a very nice advantage. It's just that FSAE isn't a job. In most schools, you don't get credit for it. It's completely voluntary and most students don't/can't spend the time to model every last detail. I just find it hard to believe many teams are run like a full fledge business (we'd never get anything done if that was the case...). I know there are some schools where students do get credit for FSAE and who expect it to help them get a career in the racing industry. For the other 95% of teams, I just can't see that as being expected. Obviously, if I was in 'FSAE Inc.' and could dedicate a full-time job along with a few others in my team, I would have everything modeled beforehand. I know everything would go together more smoothly but we would spend way too much time modeling and not enough time building.

[Jimmy01]

I thought formula SAE was like a full time job. I know a number of us in my team spend at least 40 hours a week on the project. We also do not get university credits for our efforts.

[RacingManiac]

Originally posted by Jimmy01:
I thought formula SAE was like a full time job. I know a number of us in my team spend at least 40 hours a week on the project. We also do not get university credits for our efforts.

Ditto...on my Co-Op year I spend 45 hr at work, another 40 hr at school, plus 80 miles of commuting....

[kapps]

I know, I know. It's the same with me. Last fall, I was spending 40+ hours a week on a sr design project on the intake/exhaust on our car, plus my normal duties (being the main modeler for all parts of the car, design chassis, braking, cooling, run cnc, and anything else that needs to be done) and a full courseload. No wonder I failed fluids 2... Now that I'm working 40 hours a week at a real engineering company, I know how many man hours it actually takes to do a proper design. Jimmy, you say a number of you spent over 40 hours a week, well I wish we had a number of people on our team that would do that. It would prevent us from spending the 100+ hour weeks as competition nears. Last year, it was mostly me and a sophomore who had little modeling experience but knew his way around a machine shop. I guess I'm just a bit testy when I see teams with a bunch of members that are so dedicated. Through SAE, I've learned so many things. I get a little pissed when I look around at guys who just don't take the initiative to learn, and other seniors who know their shit but jerk off because they want to re-live their freshman year.

[jrickert]

So who's down for starting a FSAE Racing League?


-Scott Proimos
-08 LTU Powertrain Leader
Amen to that. I would even be down for keeping design. I enjoy design. But quite honestly I think that most teams get burnt our with the other stuff. IMHO the quality of the cars and the racing would go up if less time was spent on things that most teams DO NOT FIND INTERSTING OR FUN. If i wanted to manufacture a prototype car for the weekend autocrosser, i would start a company to do so and the end product would not be an FSAE Car. This whole paradigm is silly.

I was a little distraught when one of the competition organizers in Michigan rejected the idea that FSAE is a race.

If FSAE wants to remain alive it needs to stay relevant and intersting. It is difficult to explain the cost report an presentation event to outsiders. I think FSAE would flourish if it adopted a more pure racing-engineering mentality. The act of winning a race by itself proves that a team has exemplary engineering prowess and the financial savvy to raise the requisite funds to compete.

In high school i was involved in a similar Design-build-compete style competition called the FIRST robotics competition. We did not have static events and it was every bit as much of an educational experience.

I have directly applied the engineering experience i have gained in FSAE and the FIRST Robotics competition to my professional career. I cannot say the same for the static events. I want those sleepless night back. These events push an already overburdened FSAE team and push them over the edge. We do this a hobby on the side. We build FSAE cars on top of paying work and classes.

Somehow FSAE takes racing and engineering, two very cool things and turns them into obscure accounting competition that is impossible to grasp by outsiders.

[MalcolmG]

Originally posted by kapps:
.....
Jimmy, you say a number of you spent over 40 hours a week, well I wish we had a number of people on our team that would do that. It would prevent us from spending the 100+ hour weeks as competition nears. Last year, it was mostly me and a sophomore who had little modeling experience but knew his way around a machine shop. I guess I'm just a bit testy when I see teams with a bunch of members that are so dedicated. Through SAE, I've learned so many things. I get a little pissed when I look around at guys who just don't take the initiative to learn, and other seniors who know their shit but jerk off because they want to re-live their freshman year.

Having a number of people doing 40+ hour weeks most of the year didn't stop a few of us doing 100+ hours most weeks from late August to November last year :P

Every year we try different things to improve our retention of new members and to try and get them involved/enthused, and every year it gets better. I think it's important to focus on not just improving your car every year, but improving your team: learn from managerial and recruitment mistakes as well as your engineering mistakes, and ensure the managerial skills and knowledge are passed through the team in the same way that you should be ensuring engineering knowledge is passed on. This year I feel we're pretty lucky to have quite a solid group of experienced team members (I count 11 who have been in the team for 3 years or more), and our new recruits have mostly turned out to be good, hard workers and are getting involved a lot better than we've seen in previous years.

I find this thread really interesting - especially the different opinions everyone has. It seems there are highly contrasting ideas as to what's important, what it takes to succeed, what the spirit of the competition is, what it should be, what technologies should and shouldn't be on a car for the weekend autocrosser, perceived advantages and disadvantages etc etc.

[lozo]

Static events do contribute a lot to the thought processes of the design of the car. It is important to keep in mind that Formula SAE is in fact a design competition aimed to cover every aspect of automotive design, from research to management and finances. The static events are meant to cover those aspects of development that cannot be judged via dynamic events.

On that note, if FSAE were an actual scenario/racing series, the teams that score badly in the static events wouldn't be able to compete due to massive cost blowouts (poor prep in cost report/admin) or inability to get sponsors (Business Presentation) or poor execution of their car and inherent design flaws (Design event). There's more to racing than having a car that makes loud engine noises and going fast.

Static events tend to pull a team down mainly due to the fact that preparation for it tends to often be an afterthought in the development process. To fully appreciate the importance of static events such as cost and business, it is important to incorporate it into the initial stages of car building and not a deliverable that has to be done for the sake of it, the same goes for design. Correspondingly, teams with expensive cars have been penalised in cost (TUG being up to 30 points down on the front runners at MIS); thats a loss of 3 places in design if you look at it that way.

Richie Wong
www.fsae.co.nz (http://www.fsae.co.nz)

[Jersey Tom]

Regarding the perfect moddeling vs. getting it close, I am of the opinion that what ever you are modelling you should model it to completion and include every detail that you can.

'Perfect' is the enemy of 'good'.

[JamesWolak]

I want to state that i am not angry with FSAE or think i could do it anywhere as good of a job. I know that Michael Royce is reading this and i do appreciate the efforts that are put into FSAE. I think all of us can say FSAE has impacted us greatly in a positive note.

Back on subject:

Not only do static events help you with real world results they help draw school support and sponsors. If it was just a race we wouldn't get as much PR and recruitment.

But this doesn't mean that the points system is correct.

Let’s be honest. The presentation event is a joke. From 2006-2008 my team was able to place in 15th+ position with minimal if any effort. The fact that it's worth as much as fuel econ/accel and more then skid pad is outrageous. I think this event should be dropped and skid pad/accel should both be worth 100 points. I would be happy with just this change alone.

Onto cost, this event has been a contest of lying. Sure some of the teams really have a car that is cheap but we all know alot of those numbers are fudged, some greatly more then others. I am sure that honest teams that think about cost have gotten beaten out by teams that lie. The new cost rules are reducing it but the lying still exists. Design should account for cost. Really the cheapest car shouldn't win cost anyways, the most appropriate costing car should, the one that weight out the pros and cons, and the only way to do this is in design.

But I can deal with cost being worth 100 points.

And then there is Fuel Econ. Personally I like the new fuel econ rule. In the end there is a result that no one can question. You might have to train your driver differently to see the results you want, or have different fuel maps for events. But pit strategy exists in most forms of racing and is directly affected by fuel eco so I am all about it.


And that’s my 83 cents.

[MH]

Whenever you enter a competition in life there will be rules. Written ones and unwritten ones. The written ones you can find in the FSAE rules, the unwritten ones are between the lines, on forums like this and in the minds of the judges and organizers. The trick is to get know them both and most importantly: interpreting them so you can maximize your results. Just look at Brawn GP.

But above all, in my opinion designing and building a protoype race-car is nothing more than a CASE conceived by experienced engineers to stimulate younger engineers to open their eyes to the real world and use their brains for more than just solving mathematical problems. They want you to learn that ALL aspects of engineering are important, cost, presentation (every engineer will have to do this in his life-time), explaining you design decisions etc. Usually you do this at some company you're going to work for, competing in FSAE will give you that edge.
The dynamics part is nothing more than proving the dynamic performance you've been promising in design and (to a lesser extent) in the presentation event. And let's be honest: it's a lot of fun too.

I agree that sometimes it's the creative liar that has an edge over other teams. But that's just an example of an unwritten rule and you're free to do that as well. It's a game. The organizing committee is trying to close the loopholes and we're trying to find them.

The thing I like most about this? Looking at the overall level of the competitions I see major steps being taken by teams. But not just by teams, also by the organizers and rules committees. Events are getting better, rules are getting clarified.

Funny thing is: we (the students) are not the only ones learning any more...

cheers,
Miki Hegedus
Delft University of Technology

[ben]

Originally posted by Big Bird:
Some interesting comments and arguments above. Just a few comments if I may as a long time observer.

The old “it is tougher now than it was 5 years ago” argument.
I looked at the results from the 2009 California event, and found the following winning times/scores
Skid Pad: around 5.0 seconds
Acceleration: around 4.0 seconds
Fuel Economy: around 3 litres
Number of teams completing all events – 37.5%

The first fully dry event I competed in was FSAE Australia 2003, and the comparable winning results were as follows:
Skid Pad: around 5.0 seconds
Acceleration: around 4.0 seconds
Fuel Economy: around 3 litres
Number of teams completing all events – around 30-40%

I’ve observed or competed in around 10 events, and have seen stuff-all variance in these values (except fuel economy, down to around 2.5 litres at times). You can’t directly compare Autocross and Endurance, (different tracks obviously), but I’ve seen nothing to convince me that UWA 2005-2006 was any better than Wollongong 2002, or Texas A&M 2006, or any other quick and well prepared team I have seen.

The competition hasn’t changed, although maybe we want to believe it has.

Engineering analysis:
If I may refer back to the original poster’s argument, where it seems the argument is being that they cannot compete with the “exotic” teams. I mean this as no personal slight against AwesomeAlvin, because I can certainly understand the underlying concern, but it is worth looking a little closer at the logic of the argument.

It seems RIT has won the West event on 885 points. I don’t consider them to have an “exotic” car, but for the sake of the argument we’ll pretend they are one of these supposedly “privileged” teams with huge budget, carbon tub, fancy bits, whatever. (BTW, congrats to them for a well deserved win). Picking some figures out of the air I’ll estimate their car weighs 190kg, and puts out around 60kW.

Now let’s just say my team is one of these “home garage” teams, and can’t possibly build anything exotic. We have the same engine as the wonder-team, but given the constraints of a steel spaceframe and lack of dyno, lets say that the best we feel can achieve over the year is a 220kg car, and 50kW output. As an engineer the first thing I need to do is rough out some calcs to see how much penalty I am at compared to the “exotic” team.

Now I’ve been playing around with some reasonably simple Excel lapsims that compare different concepts against each other in a two car dynamic “competition”, based on some old trackmaps. They are rough, but seem to match up to within a second or so of the actual competition times so they are good enough for a start. If I compare the two above concepts over all events, the difference between the 190kg 60kW supercar and the 220kg 50kW farm truck works out to around 35 points across the dynamic events. Say I’m feeling pessimistic about my lapsim, so I’ll round it up to 50 points. So if my underprivileged team executes the vehicle to the same level of preparation as the supercar, then dynamically the potential of the design itself is worth around a 50 point penalty to us.

I’ll assume that the guy doing the cost report is a complete moron and the best he can salvage for us is a 5 point bonus compared to the carbon/titanium wondercar.

Now, two scenarios:
Scenario 1: The Design judges are wonderfully understanding people and judge you equivalently competent as the wondercar engineers. The two teams score equal points in Design
Scenario 2: The Design Judges know you are competent engineers, but they all share a deeply ingrained aversion to mild steel, after the childhood trauma of having their teddy bears stolen and replaced by lengths of 25x25 RHS. You score 50 points less in design than the supercar team.

Given all the above, an equally well prepared backyard team could expect to finish somewhere between 45 and 95 points behind the winning “wonder-team”. That means a range of 790-840 points in the competition we are talking about, or somewhere between 3rd and 6th place overall. And in most cases above I've tended towards worst case, and haven't made any allowances for gains that could be made elsewhere.

So as politely as I can say it, the reason Alvin’s team finished in 11th place wasn’t just because of lack of privilege. I won’t speculate on exact reasons, but if you are finishing under 800 points you don't have a car problem.

Mind games
Teams like UWA and TU Graz have played this game well not only because have they produced incredibly well-engineered vehicles, but they have psychologically conned their competition into believing that you to match all their exotic stuff to be competitive. So the teams that try often fail (blowing out budgets, taking on technologies that they cannot implement, etc), and the teams that don’t try feel demoralized and take their mind off their own game.

After Formula Student in 2006, there was all this uproar about the “mini-F1” Graz carbon car, that came second overall (from memory). There were all these cries of “we can’t compete”. When I compared the sum dynamic scores across Accel / Fuel / Autocross / Endurance, it turns out that Dartmouth had outscored them 493 to 492 points. No-one jumps up and down and cries poor when they have to compete against Dartmouth.

If you want to succeed, play your own game. You’ll never get anywhere worrying about everyone else.

Awesome post as ever Geoff.

I got round to watching Truth in 24 yesterday - the documentary about Audi's 2008 Le Mans win. In the second to last pitstop Tom Kristensen comes in demanding slicks, but his engineer insists on cut slick inters. Tom goes out and gets on the radio asking what the Peugeots did. The engineer replies to the effect "don't worry what the Peugeots on. All you have to do is get the best out of the tyres you have on your car" - they won the race.

Having been one of those people that moaned about someone with more resources I realise I was wrong. I'm also with Tom that a good group of alumni could do a mainly steel-based car with good execution and score well. To be honest the Stutgart car is this car - and I mean that as a big compliment BTW.

As Geoff rightly (and repeatedly) reminds us - this is about engineering management as much as it is about engineering. May sound boring, but it explains a lot.

Ben

[murpia]

Personally I find it refreshing that FSAE offers the flexibility to make your own choices as a team and / or individual as to how to approach the competition as a whole. It's no different to the flexibility in the technical rules that allow a 10" wheel carbon monocoque 450cc single to compete with a 13" wheel 600cc turbo steel spaceframe. Nowhere else will you find that flexibility.

When judging the first thing I expect the teams to do is to state their competition objectives, their available resources and whether or not they get course credit, so I can put the rest in it's proper context. These are still not excuses for bad engineering, but good engineering does not necessarily mean expensive or exotic (that's the realm of art), just fitness for purpose.

Regards, Ian

[Mikey Antonakakis]

Originally posted by murpia:
Personally I find it refreshing that FSAE offers the flexibility to make your own choices as a team and / or individual as to how to approach the competition as a whole. It's no different to the flexibility in the technical rules that allow a 10" wheel carbon monocoque 450cc single to compete with a 13" wheel 600cc turbo steel spaceframe. Nowhere else will you find that flexibility.

When judging the first thing I expect the teams to do is to state their competition objectives, their available resources and whether or not they get course credit, so I can put the rest in it's proper context. These are still not excuses for bad engineering, but good engineering does not necessarily mean expensive or exotic (that's the realm of art), just fitness for purpose.

Regards, Ian

That's an awesome bit of advice right there.

Whoever it was that discussed how many points you can get by doing ____, I agree completely. That is the way I am trying to approach things this year, by trying to score as many points as possible. For our particular team, we have literally hundreds of points to gain just by finishing the car earlier so we can actually drive it before competition. There isn't any reason why my team cannot be in the top 20, or top 10 even. The way I want to accomplish this goal, boringly enough, is to have much better project management. That reminds me, time to send out a friendly email.

[jrickert]

This thread is damn intersting. +1 for FSAE Philosphy thread.

[oz_olly]

The one thing I don't get is why people complain about the way the points are weighted for each event. Geoff made a great post a few years back about the presentation event, comparing it to similarly weighted dynamic events. He highlighted how much easier it would be to score points in presentation than acceleration. If you want to win I think you really have to ask yourself what your goals are:

-Do I want to win FSAE? or

-Do I want to build the fastest FSAE car our team can?

If you focus only on the latter then you will never win FSAE because you will have written off the static events thereby letting a team with a car nowhere near as fast as yours go flying by in the points tally. I agree with all the comments previously referring to the fact that it is no coincidence that teams like TUG, Stuttgart, UWA etc do so well. They must have leaders with strong organisational skills and realistic expectations, deciding to use their resources most effectively.

I (like many others probably have) often get all excited when I see some flashy part on someone else’s car. A part of me wants to do something similar or better to try and see if I am as good an engineer or better (one upmanship). Unfortunately I have a bit of an ego (I am sure like many others) but I constantly have to remind myself that chasing flash ideas will not benefit our team. It leads to disjointed resource intensive programs that require cars to be completely designed from scratch from year to year to accommodate all this random collection of flashy parts. My goal for our team is to build a reasonably simple car using technology we understand or have proven. This should act as a platform for the team to rebuild after being on the doorstep of having the program cancelled. We desperately need to start an iterative program where we set a 3 to 4 year plan that sticks to an over arching concept allowing knowledge transfer of this concept with well aimed projects improving on it or emphasising it. This should mean enough effort is available for the team to continually learn about the previous car, why it is like it is and its strengths and shortcomings.

In 2008 we didn’t build a car at all, there were only 2 senior guys (with limited experience) and some REALLY enthusiastic 3rd years (with a lot of experience)had their great ideas and plans were squashed by the leader who ended up folding and handing over his lead towards the end of the year after it was way too late to recover. Missing a year without going to a two year build has seriously damaged our team. The experience base is almost zero and because the knowledge from the previous car was not documented (alot was passed on verbally and through experience) the chassis template rule change almost wiped out the project at our school. It was a collection of other factors but that would have been the deciding blow as there was not enough experience within the team to do a new suspension/chassis design from scratch. We are now working desperately to get everyone up to speed as the chain has been broken and the majority of the team haven’t even seen a car built let alone fully grasp the commitment required to realise one.

In 2007 we actually dedicated resources to static events and recognised them as a valuable points gathering excercise and whilst we didn't blow anyone away we made some big improvements. Unfortunately our design score doesn't reflect our change in attitude, mainly due to poor division of areas of expertise (the main designer only got about 1/8 of the time with the judges as we weren't prepared to only be allowed 4 guys in the ring at once).

Event 2006 Place 2007 Place
Cost 69.4 14 80.7 6
Presentation 55.5 10 64 4
Design 78.1 13 79 14
Total 203 223.7


The point of my long winded story is that to do well in the entire competition you have to look at every event and spread your resources where they will be most effective, if you need all your engineers to design/build get some business students etc to run sponsorship, develop the presentation and cost events etc. Some of our most dedicated and productive people are from science or business degrees. I have seen the focus of the project move so far from the design in an effort to recover that the design is almost trivialised and is seen as a necessary evil to develop drawings so manufacture can start. I think this is the worst it can get.

I would hope that Stuttgart got to the end of 2008 and said it would have been great if we included x and spent less time on boring y, but who knows how things may have panned out if their balance was ever so slightly different? They were the best project managers in the FSAE community in 2008 (in my opinion but the results speak loudly too).

Cheers

Olly

ACME Racing
UNSW@ADFA

[Kevin Hayward]

The discussion on weightings is clearly misguided. Assuming that because an event is worth 10% of the point score means that it carries a 10% importance in overall placings is completely incorrect and misses the more complex make up of the scores.

Lets start with the premise that a team needs to finish in the top 5 places in each event to score a compettion win. Then lets look at the way teams fighting for the win look at each of the events (as a delta to the winner).

If we take the latest Michigan event as an example the points difference between 1st and 5th place for each of the events is given below. (In order of most important to least important event)

Endurance/Fuel (49.97)
Autocross (36.89)
Design (25)
Skidpan (14.37)
Acceleration (13.41)
Presentation (7.57)
Cost (2.49)

We did this analysis quite a while ago and the results have not changed significantly.Ou main findings were as follows:

For a design based engineering event the focus is most certainly still on racing. The Autocross event is the competitions dirty great big secret. This event is almost always won by the best driver (assuming the car is top 10 material). It is a very difficult thing for a driver to go fast on a track they are driving for the first time. It is especially surprising that despite having the same score weighting as design it ends up having an almost 50% points advantage over design. In fact if you strip away fuel economy it usually has a bigger effect than the endurance event.

Another conclusion is that skidpan despite appearing to be less important than acceleration is worth about the same. And the two events that people whinge the most about (presentation and cost) provide almost no advantage to the winner.

This very simple analysis of the competition led us to putting much more attention on driver training and typical racing. It also led to quite a lot of skidpan training. A lot of teams appeared to put a lot of effort into Acceleration and it was never an event we picked up a lot of points. The skidpan on the otherhand helped us more than once to pick up 5-10 points on our competition.

In my opinion the only event that seems out of place is the autocross event, which I believe should sit somewhere between design and the other two dynamic events. This is because it focuses far too much on individual driver ability, and less on the engineering and associated effort of the larger team.

Kev

[Adambomb]

So much good discussion here...

To those who want FSAE to be "racing only," SCCA already has an FSAE class, and as far as I remember the only real requirements for that is that the car pass FSAE rules...

As far as "what we are designing/building," here's what I found on the sae.org FSAE "About" page:

"Formula SAE? is a student design competition organized by SAE International (formerly Society of Automotive Engineers). The first competition was started back in 1978 and was originally called the Mini Indy."

After many years, I have found that design really is the backbone of all else. A good design will make the car fast on the track, reasonably cost-effective, and exciting enough to be marketable. Up until '07 our team focused very little on design, but everything else was very well sorted out, including cost, marketing, etc. We were consistently top 25, but couldn't quite get over the hump to be consistently top 15. We've had a couple off-years, mainly because we were in essentially the same boat as oz_olly, but we too are on the "road to recovery." Watch out for us in '10. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Aside from design, I wouldn't change anything else in static events. Yes, they are pure drudgery. Especially marketing presentation, I hate it so. But the fact is, that is EXACTLY what you need to do to get sponsors; it may as well be the same pitch. The static events make well-rounded engineers, the kind that go on to become CEOs, etc., and not that stereotypical cubicle barnacle that is locked away from public eyes doing some sort of "engineering." I've seen quite a few businesses spawned off by ex-FSAE'ers, I'm sure they appreciated all the unpleasantness of static events.

I suppose my point is, we could complain about how much we hate static events, or make excuses about why our cars didn't win design, or we could just apply some points strategy and make the best of what we have.

BTW, +100 on exFSAE's comment on pg. 2:

Having seen 5 years of competitions and observed a number of teams... a lot really comes down to being the least shitty. It's all relative. It's not that judges don't like simple practical things. In 2002 or 2003, some relatively simple cars were probably the least poorly designed ("best") of the lot. Many teams have moved beyond that.

Being "less shitty" has been my pitch as a team strategy for the last 2 years. Relatively speaking, nobody here is an underdog, because we're all a bunch of noobs. The key to success is just sucking a little bit less than everyone else.

[Big Bird]

Some interesting and well thought out input here - thanks to all.

Kev, that is a very interesting points analysis you have presented - and interpreted in a way I hadn't really thought through before. Cheers for that (and nice to see you popping up on the forums again squire).

I would fully agree that the difference between the top teams each year often come down to Endurance, Autocross and Design. In each of the competitions I have attended, the scoring has been neck and neck until the start of the final days proceedings. The top teams will always bring a strong game to the static events, and making big gains on the title contenders in these events just aint going to happen, (Pareto principle well and truly evident here - a lot of effort required to snare those last few points). I think you have made a strong argument for an established team to focus on where the points gains can be greatest, in the final three events.

However, labouring this Pareto idea further, the first 80% of the points come with the first 20% of effort, and I've seen plenty of cases in my time of teams with competitive cars not even considering static events until the week, and sometimes even the day, before they are due. (For example in the US in 2006, one of the teams we were hanging around with started reading the Presentation Event rules for the first time the morning of the event. There were other teams that were worrying us on track, but weren't in contention as they had given away over 100 points to us in the static events). Those last few points may be hard to get, but the first 80% come pretty easily and I think it insanity not to allocate them an appropriate amount of energy.

In regard to the various posts about this being a "design" competition - well, it certainly is and you can't really argue that point. Where I'd draw a distinction is that some seem to think of design as that of the car, where I'd consider design to be more aligned with that of delivery of the whole project. The "design" aspect is that we are working within our own resources and constraints to deliver the greatest number of points we can, in accordance with the common design brief (the FSAE rules document). Part of this includes the technicalities of producing a car, but it also includes the delivery of all those other aspects that gain us points in the overall project.

Some have hinted at this point in earlier posts, so my humblest apologies if it seems I'm rewording others ideas.

Cheers,

[PatClarke]

Geoff,
Check your PMs

Pat

[Kirby]

After reading this thread, I felt compelled to add my own comments.

As I thought about what points I wanted to make, I realised that I couldn't say something that hadn't been said already.

I think this might indicate something rather interesting, on a long enough time line, people working in/on/around a FSAE project migrate their thinking from "building a car" to "building a team".

Now, working on my 4th car (with my 3rd team) I now find my thoughts are about the future, resource management and the best way to get the car built. As opposed to my thoughts when I was a first year; "go fast" bits, dick-in-hand technology and general bling.

When it comes to the competition, ultimately I think the target is to have the means (car, drivers, statics, planning) to get 1000 points. How to get the points is all there in the paper, even if you have to "drink from the fire hose" of design a few times to figure it all out.

Finally, reading Olly's post I also realise perhaps how similar in personality the "lifers" are.


I do have one question for you Geoff:

With respect to your comments about cars of 2008 vs. 2003 and their comparable performance. Do you believe that if you were to bring a 2003 top level team and car through some sort of time-portal to the 2008 competition that they would continue to be a top level team?

[Big Bird]

Hi Kirby,

My answer would only be an opinion, and is open to all appropriate criticism. But I'd say that Wollongong's 2002 Australian effort matches anything I've seen since. Maybe head to head you might find a few points difference between UoW 2002, UWA 2005, Stuttgart 2008, but it wouldn't be chalk and cheese.

I never saw the Stuttgart team in action last year, but I did meet them and got a good look at their car before the Oz event. You could tell they were on their game, and had the whole package of car, driver, preparation, presentation etcetera down to a tee. It came as no surprise that they walked away with the competition, just as Wollongong did in 2002.

Cheers,

[Mike Cook]

Interesting thread...

I'm not sure if this belongs here but there is something I have been thinking about:

From as far back as I can see (1994) the basic scoring of the competition has been the same (except for fuel). I'm not sure if the points scaling has changed.

To earn the minimum points in accel, one must run a 5.8 second run.

To earn the minimum points in skid pad, one must pull an average of .9g.

In the early 90's a 1.1g skid pad time may have been considered pretty fast. Now we are able to achieve maybe 1.4 or 1.5g. So in 1990, if I were the fastest car with a 1.1g run, a car .1g off the pace would only earn half the points. Now, a car .1g off the pace will earn about 5/6th of the points.

In my experience, a team would have to work tremendously hard to increase their skid pad g by .1. With the way the points are setup right now, it hardly seems worth the effort. It takes no serious effort to run a 5.35sec skid pad lap (almost any car with 4 new hoosiers on it could do that (32pts/50pts).


The same similar argument goes for acceleration as well.


I pick on these two events for a reason -

a) they are very straight forward and easy to engineer for and practice. This means driver skill matters less and the pure car capibility can be measured with more accuracy. Autocross and endurance depend a ton on driver skill and aren't always a good measurement of how well a race car was engineered (although reflects how well a team prepared overall for the whole competition).

b) These events are scored absolutely which means over time (if the scoring isn't rescaled) the points for a bad car performance won't be very different from a good car performance. This tends to bias the whole competition points towards the other events with relative scoring scales (i.e. static events).


What am I proposing?

The scaling of the points should be changed so that the teams who make considerable effort to improve their lateral and longitudinal acceleration performance be rewarded. The difference between 1.5g and 1.35g is huge. The difference between a 3.9sec and a 4.05sec run is huge. This should be reflected in the points.

Secondly, I don't necessarily think the weighting of any of the events should change, but I do appreciate the more standardized events because I feel it puts everyone on a more even playing field.

[bob.paasch]

Originally posted by Mike Cook:
It takes no serious effort to run a 5.35sec skid pad lap (almost any car with 4 new hoosiers on it could do that (32pts/50pts).


Yes, 32 points is possible, even with a car with a previously broken front suspension from the brake test and significant camber compliance in the upper pickup points due to delamination in the monocoque. :^)

The latter was repaired between skidpad and autocross.

Full report in the works...

[screwdriver]

To answer your question: what ever you like.

But, and this goes to defend against your criticism of the custom-part-exotica, the FSAE and the associated events are a design competition. The goal is to offer the students an off classroom, out of laboratory, first hand experience in organizing, financing, designing, building and running a race car. You are completely free to choose which way to go. You can either apply straight out of the shops part-purchase-engineering, like you suggest, or you can try to do your own thing. Which way you go only depends on how much you trust your own abilities. And that is pretty much what everybody is preaching about the essence of the design-event, isn't it?

There's also a catch to purchased parts, a lot of people don't see at all. You end up with a part that somebody else designed and you don't necessarily understand in depth. This always originates for missing documentation. Any aspect that's unclear or missing from the manual, or datasheet or whatever you have, will most probably lead to that part failing. Gaining that insight is way harder than designing a new part. This is why thoroughly considered usage of off-the-shelf parts is always highly rewarded and blind adaptation penalized severely.

[Peter]

There's also a catch to purchased parts, a lot of people don't see at all. You end up with a part that somebody else designed and you don't necessarily understand in depth. This always originates for missing documentation. Any aspect that's unclear or missing from the manual, or datasheet or whatever you have, will most probably lead to that part failing. Gaining that insight is way harder than designing a new part. This is why thoroughly considered usage of off-the-shelf parts is always highly rewarded and blind adaptation penalized severely.

I completely disagree, I see too often teams failing due to the desire to re-engineer the wheel for the 10th time. Blind usage of any part / design tool / method will be penalized severly. This does not mean purchased parts will fail or underperform.

I agree with Mike that the point difference on the skidpad and acceleration is too small compared to for eaxample the autocross, which I feel is overated;

How can the 'design' of a car be evaluated in a single fast lap on a unknown course with in-experienced drivers? Look a professional one-make single seaters where driver performance after many practice laps on easier to drive tracks is still highly dependant on driver skill.

The only way for an FSAE team to ensure a competetive scoring for the autocross is to run the team as a race team; lots of driver training or bring in ringers. Car setup and development will only bring you so far; in the end you need a skilled and trained driver.

Peter
Delft 04UK FSG06

[Mike Cook]

Sorry Bob, that was in no way a criticism of your teams car, I didn't even realize that was the case. You all did a hell of a job.

Mike

[Zac]

With respect to your comments about cars of 2008 vs. 2003 and their comparable performance. Do you believe that if you were to bring a 2003 top level team and car through some sort of time-portal to the 2008 competition that they would continue to be a top level team?

I don't think the performance level of the current crop of cars isn't that much higher than what was the cream of the crop ten years ago. For example, the car that won Detroit back in 1999 is still running lap times that will put 95% of the field to shame. It's also doing it at 540 pounds.

[michaelwaltrip]

Originally posted by Zac:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">With respect to your comments about cars of 2008 vs. 2003 and their comparable performance. Do you believe that if you were to bring a 2003 top level team and car through some sort of time-portal to the 2008 competition that they would continue to be a top level team?

I don't think the performance level of the current crop of cars isn't that much higher than what was the cream of the crop ten years ago. For example, the car that won Detroit back in 1999 is still running lap times that will put 95% of the field to shame. It's also doing it at 540 pounds. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

it's also got a professional test driver driving it all the time. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

[Zac]

minor details, minor details

[Mike Cook]

Originally posted by Zac:


I don't think the performance level of the current crop of cars isn't that much higher than what was the cream of the crop ten years ago. For example, the car that won Detroit back in 1999 is still running lap times that will put 95% of the field to shame. It's also doing it at 540 pounds.

Is it doing it on 1999 tires?

[Zac]

It depends on what you define as 1999 tires. Design spec, technology level, or production date? I mean, it's not like there have been too many radical advances in bias tires over the last 20 years.

[Mike Cook]

Tires available for FSAE have improved a lot in the last 20 years.

[Zac]

they've improved quite a bit, but they haven't changed very much

[Scrappy]

Zac, isnt that car running unrestricted though? From my memory, it had the stock F4i airbox on it....

[Scott Wordley]

Kev, very interesting points analysis.

We found that plotting a histogram of the points scored by each team in each event and also overall highlights this very effectively. From this you can easily decide where to put your effort, and even set your points "targets" for each event and develop means to achieve them.

Part of our improved performance and consistency in the last 5 years has come from letting go of the blind hope that we would be able to "win every event" and instead concentrating on hitting our target times/placings, in effect racing ourselves rather than worrying what everyone else is doing (as other people have mentioned).

Also I liked Ben's comment (Howdy by the way!):

"I'm also with Tom that a good group of alumni could do a mainly steel-based car with good execution and score well."

I'm pretty sure this would be the case.
But why would you do that when you can build a Formula Libre car weighing 350kg, with a 280hp turbo charged 1000cc bike engine and SERIOUS aero, and then drive it on proper tracks?

A group of Monash Alumni were thinking exactly this recently, so we started designing one. The build will start later this year. I'll post some CAD pics sometime soon. Wait till you see these wings!