2008 FSAE Rule Change Summary*

[nicky22]

What about it?

[nicky22]

What about it?

[Jersey Tom]

Wish it existed.

[TG]

It'll be posted in the fsae section on the sae.org site. That won't happen for several months though.

[moose]

it was up by the end of july or august last year; can't remember exactly when for sure. But in advance of the rules coming out.

[Maverik]

If anyone wrote down the general rule changes at the awards ceremony it would still be a big help. Recommendation: don't ask the rules committee for the gist of it, you'll get your head bit off. I remember them saying a few things:
1. We have to fit a 5% female (or was it 50th) as well as the 95% we are all used to.
2. The shoulder belt tube has to be 0.095 now, same as the main hoop.
3. The crush box must withstand a 40g momentary load with the usual 20g's after that and it must be slightly longer (6 to 4") if i remember correctly.
4. Something about the foot area
5. Clarification of ride height rules
6. Not a clue what else Royce said

[John Valerio]

Heard this one after submitting our SSEF:

Frames must be designed to transmit all loads AROUND the engine (i.e. no more semi-stressed engines).

[Flexicoker]

What I understood is that only the main hoop supports couldn't go into the engine, otherwise you could have a fully stressed engine. I beleive Michael's words were something to the effect of, "We don't care if the back half of your car breaks of while you're driving, we just don't want the roll hoop to fold over if you flip."

[VFR750R]

What about cars with transaxles that have no rear subframe?

[Marshall Grice]

roll hoop supports go forward?

[Maverik]

Actually, I think he said that your main hoop supports can not go to the engine mounts ONLY, but must go to some sort of frame ie, at least a piece of steel wrapped around the engine or a rear subframe... not too sure on whether they will need to be uniform or can be bolted, otherwise rear subframes might go by by...

[John Valerio]

i interpret it the way maverik does.

in our SSEF approval email there was a note added including the following:

"next year there will be a rule change mandating a redundant load path through the primary structure"

and yeah i believe you will still be able to have removeable bracing, as long as its in double shear, and is the required material, geometry and thickness.

[Matt N]

Can anyone who was in the room during the awards tell me exactly what the spirit of/wording of the steering rack regulations will be? I stepped out for a minute and missed all the good stuff.

Matt

[Pete Marsh]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Matt N:
Can anyone who was in the room during the awards tell me exactly what the spirit of/wording of the steering rack regulations will be? I stepped out for a minute and missed all the good stuff.

Matt </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

My understanding is the crash dummies legs were broken by the rack over his shins. The new rule will be intended to prevent/reduce this injury. I don't belive we got anything more detailed than that. I would guess it will make high mount racks a problem though, unless they allow some sort of guard or padding.

Which comp will be the first requiring these new rules?

Pete

[benjo]

Has anyone contacted the rules people directly, or know for sure when the summary will be released?

[flavorPacket]

last year it was around the end of June, I suspect it will be the same this year.

[Maverik]

This is the response I got:
"Dear Dan,

We are planning to post a summary of the major 2008 rules changes on the official Formula SAE web site within the next couple of weeks. Giving out information to any one team ahead of that would not be appropriate.

Please be a little patient.

Rules Committee,
FSAE"

Dated May 29, 2007... so hopefully sometime in the next week or two.

[benjo]

Sweet, thanks for that. Now I don't have to hassle them http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

[Dave_Dal]

Well, the rule change summary has been posted. All looks fine except item 1.2 "Car should be designed for people from the 5th% female to 95th% male". I really hope that the 5th% percentile female requirement is a typo because that almost seems too silly to be true. A 5th percentile female is 1527.8mm (60 inches) tall versus a 95th percentile male which is 1866.5mm (73.5 inches) tall. But of course that just makes it more of a challenge! On the flip side it does force everyones car to essentially fit everyone at the competition.

[mtg]

I seriously doubt the 5% female requirement is an error. Michael Royce was talking about it quite a bit at West. I think he may have even said at West that it would be a requirement for 2008.

[adrial]

I hope it is actually enforced.

If you look at some cars driving during the competition (I am thinking FSAE East)...you can see that they clearly don't meet the broomstick over the 2 roll hoops to drivers head clearence.

I never really noticed it until I was looking at pictures afterwards though.

[Carin]

I'm excited about the 5th percentile female rule. I'm 5'2" and can't reach the pedals on any of my team's previous cars. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_razz.gif

[absolutepressure]

I have a feeling that we'll be seeing many, many "How do I make adjustable pedals?" threads http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif

[Kurt Bilinski]

Geez, guys, I'd have thought you'd be all over the pending female rule change. What better way to entice a petite, &lt;cough&gt; hot &lt;cough&gt;, *light* driver to help the overall weight target.

[Pete M]

They've posted the 08 Rules Changes (http://students.sae.org/competitions/formulaseries/rules/changesummary.pdf).

[BeaverGuy]

So does this "3.5.2 Fuels Unleaded 93 (R+M)/2 or 98 RON specified as the
"standard"� gasoline for the Series." Mean that there will only be 1 fuel available for any of the competitions now? That could certainly lead cause a commotion among some teams.

[Wes Snaza]

Yes, I am curious as to the intent of that rule change as well since we have had good success with ethanol the past couple years in terms of performance and sponsorship. Needless to say I think I will be emailing Mike Royce in the near future and will post his reply.

Wes Snaza

[R/TErnie]

by reading the rule just as it is...

it states that it is the STANDARD gasoline for the series.

Meaning...they will have E-85 as an option still...as well as this STANDARD gasoline. No more two different kinds of gas.

This is how I interpret the rules at least.

No mention of relocating the TB until after the restrictor? suxors for turbo cars.

[drivetrainUW-Platt]

I dont think they will ever move the restrictor for the turbo cars, they make plenty of power as is.

[Maverik]

Pretty sure the 5th percentile female comes from national standards used for crash tests, same with 95th percentile "percy." My concern is a smaller women will always fit where a 6'2" male will, except for the legs. You think they'll have a standard like percy to measure the length from the back of the seat to the pedals? That honestly sucks since most the guys I know in SAE are in the 50th percentile male range. One more challenge I guess...

[Rex]

I'm not sure that the 5th percentile female rule will have that great of an impact on car designs. Note that it's added to section 1.2, the same section that says:
"The car must be low in cost, easy to maintain, and reliable."
And we see how few cars meet those standards...

It doesn't sound like there's any REQUIREMENT that a 5th percent female be able to drive the car. I would guess there won't be a related tech item for this change, unless they decide to also make the change in a "required" section of the rules (like 3.3.4.1). Just my opinion though...

[Chris Allbee]

just remember, this list is a big heads up. I'd wait to finalize designs until the official 2008 rules are published.

[MikeDutsa]

Or VP is 4'11" and her problem is more that she cant see out of the car, let alone not being any where near the pedals. All of our drivers are 5'10" to 6'3". Being able to fit that range your peadles have to adjust from the wheel CL to the bulkhead. crazy, i thought eight inches of adjustment was excessive.

[Chris Allbee]

Ok, I think a lot of people aren't thinking about the anatomy of the human body and the range that occurs. Both myself and our team captain are the same height, but my legs are over two inches longer than his, therefore his pedals are closer than mine. It also means that the headrest has to be lower (or larger) in the car so that my helmet will contact it in a safe manner without putting bending loads on my neck. I bet if some of the teams were to measure inseam lengths and hip-to-shoulder and shoulder-to-head heights of their male drivers they would find a larger range than they anticipate. And making the car fit those varied dimensions will only result in better comfort and control in the vehicle, which will lead to more driver confidence and decreased lap times.

Also, don't just limit yourself to mechanical adjustments. Foam inserts can be made for each driver and for the extremely short of leg can be used as a "booster seat" to get the driver within the range of the pedals.

[Welfares]

I agree with the foam insert.

We use an expandable foam, you basically sit in the car on a garbage bag, in the position you would drive, put some mix in the bag, and it expands around you.

We've had drivers from 5'6" to 6'2" driving the same car WITHOUT an ajustable pedal set using this method.

[Anday]

Has anyone heard when the Official 2008 Rules will be released? I'm interested to see some of the details for these changes.

[benjo]

If the 07 rules release is anything to go by it won't be for a while. If I remember correctly they came out while us Aussies where on Summer break, towards the end of it; so that would of been around January maybe even Feburary.

[Anday]

Anyone been bugging the rules committee about a date for the 2008 Rulebook?

[Brian S]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> Hi Brian,



I just received all the final changes and will be working on the rules today and tomorrow so that they are posted online at the latest Monday, August 27th.



Mrs. Kaley (Shellhammer) Zundel

Senior Collegiate Programs Coordinator

Educational Relations

SAE International

400 Commonwealth Drive

Warrendale, PA 15096-0001

www.sae.org (http://www.sae.org)

724-772-8533

724-776-0890 (fax) </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Drew Price]

Kaley got married!!

[Superfast Matt McCoy]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Chris Allbee:
It also means that the headrest has to be lower (or larger) in the car so that my helmet will contact it in a safe manner without putting bending loads on my neck. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Only an engineer would refer to whiplash as "bending loads on my neck." http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

Remember that the seat belts angles have to be within a specified range for all drivers, so if you stick a short driver in the car, you might need to use foam, or the yellow pages, to meet that requirement.

[Andy K]

Forget this year's rule changes. I'm worried about 2009 as we have realized there's no way we can get 6 newbies build their first car in time for '08. 08 rules changes seen simple enough and can easily deal with them. Any rumors on dimensions for this 'minimum cockpit opening' rule proposed for 2009?

[Mike Hart]

I can't comment on what exactly the rules will state, but apparently the top few cars in FSUK got tested for them (this is 3rd hand info from one of the Loughborough team members) to give an idea of what would be acceptable and what wouldn't. Apparently Loughboroughs car was close to the limit but would pass, as were Stuttgart I think. Delft and RMIT I was told would have failed though, so read into that what you will. I would guess for most 'normal' sized FSAE cars (ie not the featherweights) there shouldn't be too many issues. It may well mean some changes to those with smaller cars though. As I said though...take this info with a pinch of salt, you never know how much gets altered either intentionally or unintentionally when passing stuff on, but perhaps it might be worth looking at a a few of the above cars to get some kind of an idea.

[Andy K]

So basically if we can fit a 6'4" driver through the opening we should be ok. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif Thanks.

[flavorPacket]

I've heard from a solid source (tech inspector) that drivers will have to be able to bring their knees to their chests while in driving position. whether this will be in 2009 or beyond I wasn't told.

[rjwoods77]

I doubt this because I had to write in a rules clarification about my steering wheel postion that led to the unofficial to become offical rule about the front roll hoop and the forward edge of the steering wheel being 10 inches away max. The reason given for this was in the car flipped over they didnt want the drivers legs to come out of the car. The point for the front roll hoop was leg retention/protection apprently. So if they reverse the ruling I will laugh my ass off since there isnt a config that would allow legs to pop out because the steering wheel would stop it first. Funny thing is it completely rediculous to think that will happen in formula because I was in Mini Baja for three cars and seen some pretty hideous crashed with cars that looked like this (knees outside the side impact structure)

http://www.rit.edu/~bajawww/images/ohio05/jpg_IMG034.htm (http://www.rit.edu/%7Ebajawww/images/ohio05/jpg_IMG034.htm)

and it never happened because the steering wheel was in the way or the fact that things were so tight. Mini Baja is waaaaayyyyyyyyyy more dangerous that formula ever could be. Which ever judge dealt with me on this one I am not knocking on you. Just if you guys require this to be a rule (knees to chest) then I went through a whole lot of sweating over fixing the problem for nothing. I'll keep my eye on this one.

[LU-Hetrick]

At FSAE West we were shown two templates that will be used (starting in '09 I think?). The first will be placed into the cockpit from top down to basically define a footprint for the cockpit, and the second will be placed in the leg area to determine a cross section. From where we were sitting they looked fairly large. There is no way that most teams cars presently would pass. Our cars would easily fail (although for those of you who have seen our cars this might not be suprising).

Ryan Hetrick
Lehigh University FSAE

[Composites Guy]

I understand rules to make a competition well-defined (i.e. nobody throws a jet engine, or 2 wheeler into the mix). I understand rules to make a competition safe. But it seems like we're averaging about 10 rule changes per year... with some of the bigest changes going to make the cars more similar. Personally, I'm not interested in a cookie cutter car competition like Nascar. The cars all look enough alike already. Cars like RMIT that break the mold are a breath of fresh air and give new life to the competition. This new life means new engineering, not just copying last years car with one or two tweaks. This is primarily an engineering competition, not a spec racing league. At the rate things are going in 10 years we're liable to see a 4 cylinder mandatory rule, and a mininum weight requirement. This would KILL originality and innovation. END THE RULE CHANGES!!!

*end of rant

[Maverik]

So are these rules coming out today or what?

[flavorPacket]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Composites Guy:
I understand rules to make a competition well-defined (i.e. nobody throws a jet engine, or 2 wheeler into the mix). I understand rules to make a competition safe. But it seems like we're averaging about 10 rule changes per year... with some of the bigest changes going to make the cars more similar. Personally, I'm not interested in a cookie cutter car competition like Nascar. The cars all look enough alike already. Cars like RMIT that break the mold are a breath of fresh air and give new life to the competition. This new life means new engineering, not just copying last years car with one or two tweaks. This is primarily an engineering competition, not a spec racing league. At the rate things are going in 10 years we're liable to see a 4 cylinder mandatory rule, and a mininum weight requirement. This would KILL originality and innovation. END THE RULE CHANGES!!!

*end of rant </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

since when is this competition about innovation? It's about developing engineers. If the powers-that-be feel more restrictions develop better engineers (a perspective I personally share), then the changes are fine by me.

Besides, I don't really think that a few rules about driver comfort are going to restrict innovation...they're just gonna keep teams that don't design cars for 95% males from cheating as much as they currently do.

[Christopher Catto]

ummm.

i think knees to the chest is an exaggerated expression that has been used when in fact the judges are probably looking for two things:

1) the ability of the driver to retract in part his legs in case of a crash, to prevent broken feet, lower part of the leg etc.

i dunno however how a bigger cockpit opening would help. this would be more do do with the size of the footwell.

2) keep with the spirit of the rules where the car might be marketed as an autocross car in the states and europe, rather than in Thailand!

So if you want smaller FSAE cars start by stopping your bro and sis eating so much bad food. Get em on a grapefruit for breakfast, pasta with no sauce for lunch, salad for dinner, joghurt as dessert. that will help a lot. oh, and no jumping in the car just to buy a lightbulb at the hardware store... unless its and FSAE car of course http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

[rjwoods77]

Opening wont help when your knees smash into the steering wheel in the event of fron impact deformation. My bet is the judges are trying to make rules that allow for these cars to be driven by people other than a 5'8" 150 lbs guy. The car has to fit bigger people but alot of teams have real tall people as well as short.

[Mike Cook]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Composites Guy:
I understand rules to make a competition well-defined (i.e. nobody throws a jet engine, or 2 wheeler into the mix). I understand rules to make a competition safe. But it seems like we're averaging about 10 rule changes per year... with some of the bigest changes going to make the cars more similar. Personally, I'm not interested in a cookie cutter car competition like Nascar. The cars all look enough alike already. Cars like RMIT that break the mold are a breath of fresh air and give new life to the competition. This new life means new engineering, not just copying last years car with one or two tweaks. This is primarily an engineering competition, not a spec racing league. At the rate things are going in 10 years we're liable to see a 4 cylinder mandatory rule, and a mininum weight requirement. This would KILL originality and innovation. END THE RULE CHANGES!!!

*end of rant </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Listen hear mr.

Your an idiot, and you miss the point completely. Even leagues like Nascar have an extraordinary amount of engineering go into the cars. Have more rules just means you have to be a better engineer and more clever.

end of rant.

[VFR750R]

i agree Mike.

Composites guy, I will obviously not be able to change your mind but good engineering prevails regardless of the rules and rules changes also force 'innovation' as the optimum has now changed and therefore things previously set in stone would need to be readdressed.

Additionally, you could imagine at some time approaching infinity, all the cars would look exactly the same if the rules stayed the same. As information passed on all cars would approach a common optimazation for the rules. If the cars do eventually begin to have a common format, the rules committee should drastically alter the rules, but only to promote good engineering not because the cars are all the same.

[Pete Marsh]

The knees to chest thing and the interior templates where also tried in a few cars at FSAE east. I was told the knee raising requirement is to allow proper extraction of an injured driver (possible neck/back injury) without having to cut the car up. There is also some other safety related changes, all results of the crash testing that was done on a FSAE car some time ago. As soon as a safety issue or better, safer solution becomes apparent the rules have to be changed, just in case the worst happens.
Whatever the rules, we just have to make the best of them. Rules are an engineer's friend, they define the problem for us, and without them we would just have to make our own decisions on all these issues anyway.

Pete.

[Biggy72]

I just have a little question about the knees to the chest thing... Well if it's intended to be able to get a person out without cutting up the car, and the person's hurt enough to call for that kind of attention, then wouldn't the car be so messed up that you may not be able to get a person out that easily any way? And who cares about the car at that point? The only reason not to cut the car up is it's quicker not to.

[Big Bird]

A good reason not to cut the car up is that it is another step you have to go through in the process of getting treatment to the driver. I mean you can't legislate for every possible scenario, but if I were injured in one of these things it would be nice to be lifted out immediately if possible, rather than have to sit there for an hour while someone hacks around me with an angle grinder. (I had someone hack into my ankle with an angle grinder once, it doesn't feel nice. And as for sparks? Spilt fuel?)

A few comments about some of the above.

Obviously the RMIT car rates a few mentions above, given that it is at a rather extreme end of the scale. Certainly agreed. I'm not sure if anyone above is implying our mob have been cheating, but our car has met the 95th percentile rule as has been defined by the rules. I'm 195cm (6 foot 5), which puts me slightly over the 95th percentile in height, and have driven both our '03 and '05 cars in comps. And I can do driver egress in just over 4 seconds (James Waltman can vouch for this!). It has been an extreme interpretation of the rules, and certainly if I was driving across the state to visit my parents I'd choose something more comfortable - but it is legal.

As for the comments that minor changes like cockpit opening will restrict the types of vehicle concepts that are competitive - look at ETS. They do a similar car to ours, are competitive on track, and have brilliant ergos. Claude Rouelle fits into the car, reckons it is the best thing he has ever sat in. I've been trying to convince our crew for a couple of years now to spend a couple of kgs on more driver space - and now the decision has been made for us. So personally I welcome the new rules. I sincerely doubt that two or three kgs will significantly affect the performance of our car.

And Pete, I think your final quote is gold. The rules are our friends. Remove a few decisions, and we can spend our time more fruitfully on the things that matter.

Cheers all

[flavorPacket]

For the record, Geoff, when I was talking about teams who cheat on driver space, I didn't mean RMIT. Our #1 driver actually sat in the R06 at student and can certainly attest to the above-average ergo.

But we all know there are plenty of teams out there who do, and I think that this new rule is a good way to combat that.

[Composites Guy]

Geoff (Big Bird): I hope no-one is disparaging your achievments in FSAE... Your car is a ray of sunshine in FSAE and your comments are always thoughtful, kind and intelligent on these forums. I'm glad too to hear that you feel it won't require a major change of focus for your team to accomidate the rules.

Mike Cook the name-caller: In the words of several of our Alum who are full time in NASCAR 'the day of good engineering in Nascar has come and gone'. There is no incentive to put the cash into cool engineering when NASCAR officials will make you strip your car down and show everyone else the details after one race. That or they will declare your innovation an 'unfair advantage' and ban it. The emphasis now in NASCAR is driver improvement according to the Alum. Didn't Tony Stewart recently compare NASCAR to the WWF.

Flava-FlavorPacket: Good engineering is ABOUT innovation... engineering without innovation is simply copying or quality control. Good engineering produced by good engineers is the stuff than hangs in the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. I don't really think that a few rules about driver comfort are going to restrict innovation either. But are they necessary? Are kids crashing these cars and breaking their shins on a regular basis. Are there really so many cars that can't even fit a driver? We had a car two years ago that didn't fit people well.. and guess what.. it didn't take a rulebook to force us to make changes. Each rule change may seem small, but add up 10 rule changes a year for 10 years and you've got quite a different compeition.

Ultimately I am worried that this competition will stagnate. Each year 50 new kids from Cornell will bring a carbon copy of last years car and their hand-me-down notes on how to answer the judge's questions... and there will pat's on the back all around from the judges. There are quite a few judges that love the status quo. Try to bring something off the wall different, and even if it works well you will find you face a serious uphill battle in the court of design judge oppinion. The beauty right now is that the rules are still wide open enough for a RMIT or a Texas A&M to sneak in something that blows the status quo off its butt. Lets try to keep it that way.

[LU-Hetrick]

I don't think you need to worry about the judges patting the carry-over teams on the back. There were more than a few judges that told us that the reason they (Cornell and others) didn't make it to design semi-finals is because they were just carry-over teams and couldn't justify why the car was designed the way it was.

I agree that the rules are forcing us to develop into better engineers, and I don't think that it discourages innovation at all as we are forced to come up with new ways to make our ideas work. I'm sure there are similar protests every year the rules are changed, but everyone just gets down to it and builds cars and learns from them.

As far as the whole ergo debate goes, we spent a lot of time this past year focusing on meeting the 95th percentile driver requirement. Not just passing the "Percy" rule but also in hip room etc. We sacrificed a couple lbs. but it was worth it to fit all our driver comfortably, as well as any judge that tried to sit in the car. I'm not saying it was the best, but it is def. a primary consideration, and shouldn't be an after thought.

Ryan Hetrick
Lehigh University FSAE

[slingracer 62]

Finally they are posted. Though the fuel regulations are still vague..

[james17]

As far as driver ergo, I seem to remember a funny story from along those lines from a design cycle a few years back... As I remember it, we where in our design cave working on the car we designed, built and tested and blew up and rebuilt in 5 months and it occured to us that we need some measurements. Well, the tallest guy, the fatest guy, the shortest guy and on where all measured. About that time it occured to the chief engineer that the person with the widest hips that could possibly drive the car was a girl... Long story short I snuck up on her with a ruler while she was grinding on something and now her and our chief engineer are married... but she wasn't very happy at the time...

[VFR750R]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">

Ultimately I am worried that this competition will stagnate. Each year 50 new kids from Cornell will bring a carbon copy of last years car and their hand-me-down notes on how to answer the judge's questions... and there will pat's on the back all around from the judges. There are quite a few judges that love the status quo. Try to bring something off the wall different, and even if it works well you will find you face a serious uphill battle in the court of design judge oppinion. The beauty right now is that the rules are still wide open enough for a RMIT or a Texas A&M to sneak in something that blows the status quo off its butt. Lets try to keep it that way. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Whatever dude, you obviously know nothing about Cornell's team except how many kids show up for the competition and half of those get on the team 6 weeks before the comp and have nothing but final prep to add to that years entry. You also don't seem to understand the design process and if you look into the past, years where we made design semifinals don't always correlate with our championship years.

I was taking you seriously until that...

[Sathersc]

Rule Number TBD - Cockpit
Cockpit Opening

In order to ensure that the opening giving access to the cockpit is of adequate size, a
template shown in Drawing X will be inserted into the cockpit opening. It will be
held horizontally and inserted vertically until it has passed below the top bar of the
Side Impact Structure (or its equivalent for monocoque cars).

During this test, the steering wheel, steering column, seat and all padding may be removed.
Internal Cross Section:
A. A free vertical cross section, which allows the template shown in Drawing Y to be passed
vertically through the cockpit to a point 100 mm (4 inches) behind the face of the rearmost
pedal when in the inoperative position, must be maintained over its entire length.
The only things that may encroach on this area are the steering wheel, steering column and any
padding that is required by Rule 3.4.14. "Driver's Leg Protection"�.
B. The driver, seated normally with his seat belts fastened and with the steering wheel removed must be able to raise both legs together so that his knees are past the plane of the steering wheel in the rearward direction. This action must not be prevented by any part of the car.


Well there's your answer right there. 2008 rules are up by the way for those interested.

[Pete Marsh]

I can't see that in the rules?? Which section is it in? Sorry if I'm just blind.
Pete.

[Brian S]

The stuff about rules for 09 is on page 104

[Derf]

Page 104 for people like me. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_confused.gif

Well anyways. My personal reaction is that the cockpit opening regulations would not be that big of a deal. From the dimensions laid out some points of the cockpit will need widened and such, but no significant affect on suspension hard points and a slight addition of chassis weight.

The leg rules are a bit more upsetting. A block that's roughly a 350 mm square needing to reach within 100 mm of the pedals. I see the point. But the dimensions seem kin of a sasquatch in the lateral dimension. I have wide feet, but not that wide. Not to mention this has some serious effects on possibilities for suspension hard points, and specifically for tube frames a drastic effect on the paths of triangulation available between the upper and lower points (assuming that the lower point is more inset as seen on almost any setup). There are ways around it, but a square seems less than an opportune shape. Luckily this is still in the development stage. Its funny how they left a small circular cutout for what I presume is a upper a-arm plane mounted steering system. I'd be hard pressed to find 350 mm under most racks mounted in this fashion without digging a hole in the ground. Can you say large noses on the cars?

I really don't like the knees to steering wheel concept either (go figure). Again I understand the need for the rule, but as such a different method would be preferable. If you want to lay a driver down in the car you will need a low front hoop to see over. Doing this puts a hoop in the way of the legs without making the cockpit excessively long. Making the cockpit excessively long makes the steering wheel difficult to reach due to proximity restrictions with respect to the front hoop. I feel overconstrained. I would suggest defining a secondary plane at a set distance rearward of the bulkhead as a 'crush' zone. All drivers must be able to retract their feet past this plane without hindrance. Thus more design paths are left open for the team to decide.

Then again we could do something totally off the wall like requiring that the driver remain behind front wheel centerline. Nobody does that right? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif I can just imagine the complaints on that one, but it would surely shake up things.

These are proposed rules, although some have already gone through decent amounts of testing and we know they are coming.

PS Pete, I felt sort of neglected in England as our ride height didn't get checked at all (and i did turn it up!). http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif I'm sure it will be next year though.

Addition: Does anybody know a good source for the calibrated broom sticks that they had at Detroit? I checked at hardware store but didn't find any that were up to the level I expect of technical inspection.

[Matt N]

I was "assuming" that the coming footbox regs would use a template identical to the FIA Formula 1 template which is 300mm x 300mm.

I am now revising the next car's model to fit these proposed regs. It ends up kinda looking like a short fat whale.

As an aside - has anyone figured out where the front dampers can go?

Matt

[rjwoods77]

Anyone notice Formula VIR? Wow.

[Mully]

I'm definately not a fan of the knee clearance proposal.

I personally can't see any reason for that rule. If someone could explain, with evidence, the sense of that rule I am all ears, but in the mean time I don't like it.

I see that it will force us teams who look to lower the centre of gravity by positioning the driver down low into changing to a bolt upright position just so that the driver can see over the front roll hoop/nose of the car.

On another note, I can see exactly where they are coming from with the other rules and I think they are good, especially the front impact attenuator requirements.

[Pete Marsh]

LOL Fred. You know they would have checked you if it was low though.

Maybe some wings and big pods will distract the eye from the "short fat whale" look.

Pete.

[Composites Guy]

VFR750R, Sorry... I shouldn't pick on Cornell. I really do respect the work you guys do and my frustration is not with your team, but rather the judges.

[slingracer 62]

So has anyone put the new templates against thier existing model files? Possibly the dimensions will be made more reasonable before the actual rule is instated.

[Kirk Feldkamp]

Sounds like a bad time to be on a two year car building cycle... IF the rules change, then you're screwed and you'd have to do a whole new chassis.

You guys do realize that the more you complain about the potential change, the more that's going to make the rules committe want to change it, right?

-Kirk

[LU-Bolton]

Composites Guy,
We feel your pain at Lehigh. Most of you know we've been doing things a little different for four years now. At West this year, one judge told me we didn't make design semis because we were too innovative and different. I've seen it especially with respect to composites. Most of the judges are skeptical and scared of what we do with composites because they have some built up notions in their head that composites are brittle, expensive, fatigue, and will fail if you scratch a part. Or maybe it's because we didn't justify our material choice.

The truth is for all of you, that when you do something different... more people will doubt you than believe in you. You have to prove yourself, either on the track or in the design tent. Just showing up isn't enough. You have to do twice the work to justify an "out of the box" design properly than to bring something that everyone knows works.

Such is life... But that won't stop us from pushing the limits and improving each year. Eventually maybe every car will run carbon flexures, that would make me proud. To be one of those people that pioneered a new form of technology.

Bottom line: If the judges are skeptical of what you've designed, then you haven't done enough work into testing your design.

Aaron Cassebeer

[Biggy72]

I don't really understand why the foot box area needs to be so large. I just measured our 06' car. It was our first car and it had a gas, brake, and clutch pedal pretty spaced out and ours would still need to be about 1.75" wider at the bottom of the box. I'm a relatively big guy with pretty large feet and I had no problem finding the pedals in that car.

[Anday]

Is anyone else curious about how they will define the 5th Percentile female as a Vehicle Design Objective? They didn't add any more information beyond what it said in the Rule Change Summary.

[Dick Golembiewski]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Ultimately I am worried that this competition will stagnate. Each year 50 new kids from Cornell will bring a carbon copy of last years car and their hand-me-down notes on how to answer the judge's questions... and there will pat's on the back all around from the judges. There are quite a few judges that love the status quo. Try to bring something off the wall different, and even if it works well you will find you face a serious uphill battle in the court of design judge oppinion. The beauty right now is that the rules are still wide open enough for a RMIT or a Texas A&M to sneak in something that blows the status quo off its butt. Lets try to keep it that way. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>


As someone involved in SAE student vehicle design competitions from every aspect save headquarters staff for the past 29 years -- including FSAE motorsports design judge -- I can say that you don't have a clue as to how the design judging process works.

I didn't judge this year as I am weighing ending my involvement after so many years. For awhile, I seemed to respond to this kind of statement on a yearly basis.

Since I may not judge again, I can be a bit more candid. Cornell has won so many times because they bring the entire package more often than not. There is innovation, but it is introduced incrementally, rather than in one huge leap. Superficially, the cars may look the same because the basic layout of the frame is similar from year-to-year, but there is a lot more under the surface if, like us, you get to look.

They also show us an understanding of their design. Do they have "hand-me-down notes" on how to answer the questions posed? Probably -- as should all teams if they're properly prepared. What they can't know is just what questions we're going to ask, and to assume that they are all the same every year is incorrect.

Now, a few years ago, I picked them to win after seeing the other entries, but they didn't make the design finals. Why? For one thing, they couldn't answer some questions put to them.

We like innovation, but if you want to win the competition you have to have the entire package. Innovation for its own sake, or that which is not tested or developed, isn't going to get the job done overall.

[Alexandre D.]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Composites Guy:
Ultimately I am worried that this competition will stagnate. Each year 50 new kids from Cornell will bring a carbon copy of last years car and their hand-me-down notes on how to answer the judge's questions... and there will pat's on the back all around from the judges. There are quite a few judges that love the status quo. Try to bring something off the wall different, and even if it works well you will find you face a serious uphill battle in the court of design judge oppinion. The beauty right now is that the rules are still wide open enough for a RMIT or a Texas A&M to sneak in something that blows the status quo off its butt. Lets try to keep it that way. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

It's not because a car's paint is the same color for 10 year that it is the same. Moving a single suspension point half an inch away may create totally different compensation, RC, LLTD. Yet some people will complain that nothing changed while a guy spent a year redesigning how the tire reacts to the road... If you bring a new engine, claim it outputs 300HP and make 200mpg out of nowhere... get ready to answer some questions. If you can answer them, congrats you just won design.

There are 140 cars each year at FSAE... Somewhat, I think it's good that some teams look alike. That means that the engineers are starting to converge to a solution as they start to understand what they are doing. Is there less work involved? No. Is there less engineering? No. The work load and advanced engineering never stop to increase. Maybe that means something???

Good engineering is not innovation. Good engineering is getting the job done with respect to your objectives.

And about the hand-me-down notes... Design is like university finals. Sure maybe you know your stuff, but if you can't explain it clearly within a limited amount of time, you fail. That's why you do homework. You develop hand-me-down notes to answer every possible question.

[Discretely elite]

Does anyone have any info on the rule regarding fuel type (3.5.2)? It is very vague and does not specifically say E85 is still available to use.

However, there is still specification of E85 fueled vehicle for the restrictor (3.5.4.3).

[rjwoods77]

Just to give you a look at what baja cars hit and how they fall. Look at the drivers get knocked around. Not making any point other than to say that there is a way more violent SAE series that have half the safety rules that Formula does.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=TtyPwMRDWTw

http://youtube.com/watch?v=W7yIoYAjn9M

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XvWBX_s_Bf0&mode=related&search=

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DWrefMlKu7o&mode=related&search=

[Superfast Matt McCoy]

some quick comments:

The design judges aren't "afraid" of your design. Many of them know a lot more than you about everything. They are smart people that have been doing this much longer than you have. most of them anyways.

The safety rules are strict for a reason. If there is a 1 in 5,000 chance that someone will get seriously injured or die in one of these cars, then that will happen within only a few years. There are a lot of competitions and a lot of teams. If someone dies at one of these competitions, it's over folks. Within a week you'll be building robots and radio controlled airplanes, both of which are totally lame.

Meeting seemingly retarded design criteria is just preparing you for your future job. You're going to have to meet impact or emissions requirements, cost limits, and if you go into NASCAR then you'll be limited by the rules to pushrod, carburated motors with cable driven fuel pumps. Enjoy your relatively open rules while you can.

[Biggy72]

It seems to me a more responsive and better prepared bunch of course workers would help more than anything you could do to a car. At least that's how it looked in California.

[woodstock]

Does anybody know how definite are the proposed 09 changes. It usually isn't far away. I'm asking mainly about the minimum cross section and knees passing the steering wheel rules. It seems nobody likes them for various reasons and concerning safety I think it shouldn't be too hard to make a necessary chassis crash/drop test or other equivalent to prove it won't crush the driver's legs.

If we could get some dialogue going between a number of teams and rules commitee and/or whoever is in charge of safety I'm sure there's a compromise.

[MalcolmG]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by woodstock:
I think it shouldn't be too hard to make a necessary chassis crash/drop test or other equivalent to prove it won't crush the driver's legs.
</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's a nice idea, but I can't imagine the strain on team morale when we have to build TWO monocoques in a year, just so that we can destroy one to prove the car is safe; I'd rather just build for some (potentially) overly cautious rules and only have to do so once!

[Chris Allbee]

Considering the frequency of fires in FSAE I for one was fairly pleased with the crew's response times in California, they arrived at the car before our driver had a chance to get more than 30 feet from the car and he wasn't exactly taking a stroll at that point. I know some of you on course want to bitch and moan about the corner workers not tossing the flags fast enough, but take some responsibility here. Get your eyes further than 10 feet from the front of your car and you will notice dangerous situations sooner, then use YOUR head to make a determination on the SAFEST course of action.

[Hot Rod JayRad]

I still have not heard back from the rules comittee regarding fuels being offered at FSAE and FSAE West. Anyone else have any luck?

"The basic fuel available at competitions in the Formula SAE Series is unleaded
gasoline with an octane rating of 93 (R+M)/2 (approximately 98 RON). Other fuels
may be available at the discretion of the organizing body."

my hope is that 93, 100, and E85 will be offered. If you look at last year's rules, the "basic" fuel was 94 octane and yet 100 and E85 were also offered. Anyone have any thoughts?

[moose]

from my understanding (and memory) of what was said at the awards ceremony in michigan last year, on the gasoline side it sounded like Only 93 octane would be avail. I can't recall what was said about E85.

[Matt N]

I've got a question regarding the proposed 2009 rules and specifically the cockpit vertical cross section template rule.

On page 106 of the rules file it states that the 350mm x 350mm cross section must pass vertically through the cockpit "to a point 100mm behind the face of the rearmost pedal when in the inoperative position..."

Is this 100mm towards the rear of the car or towards the front? ie. does the template have to pass the pedals by 100mm, or stop 100mm short of the pedals?

Thanks for the input!

Matt

[Drew Price]

I interpret it as 100mm towards the driver, before you reach the pedals.

It seems to me like this rule will create either a bathtub shaped driver's compartment, or a very cylindrical one with smaller openings and wider middles to accomodate the forwards movement of the template.

Both will look interesting.

Best,
Drew

[Hot Rod JayRad]

Just received an email back from the rules committee regarding fuels:

"The intent is to offer three fuels at all three (3) of the North American FSAE events, VIR, Michigan and West. These three fuels would be:

* Unleaded 92/93 octane (R+M)/2, i.e. "Premium Unleaded"�.
* Unleaded 100 octane (R+M)/2
* E-85.


However, until the SAE-I Sales Department can give us confirmation that an agreement has been reached with the fuel supplier, we cannot say for certain whether the intent will be realized. As soon as we have that information, we will publish it."

Typical red tape stuff. Watch for a rules update for the final outcome.

[Matthew Bell]

Does anyone have any information regarding the minimum chassis dimensions? I was thinking that based on the wording of the proposed changes that the final dimensions of the templates would be released in early 2008 in the CDS newsletter. Just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this.

[Mike Cook]

Agreed. Working on the CoT and would really like to know the min dimensions.

Mike

[brettd]

Bump again for anyone from the rules committee.

Could we please have some sort of confirmation regarding whether these rules and dimensions are final for 2009 competitions.

Teams will be starting to design cars for 2008 and 2009 international competitions early next year so any confirmation would be greatly appreciated.

[benjo]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by woodstock:
Does anybody know how definite are the proposed 09 changes. It usually isn't far away. I'm asking mainly about the minimum cross section and knees passing the steering wheel rules. It seems nobody likes them for various reasons and concerning safety I think it shouldn't be too hard to make a necessary chassis crash/drop test or other equivalent to prove it won't crush the driver's legs.

If we could get some dialogue going between a number of teams and rules commitee and/or whoever is in charge of safety I'm sure there's a compromise. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>


I'd say it's a pretty good chance of going ahead. At the recent FSAE-A comp they were informally testing cars to this, as well as sitting an actual guy who was supposedly 95th percentile into the cars and seeing how it all went. I have no idea if this happened at the other comps this year, but seems to be a good indication that it will coming.

--------------
VU Motorsports

[Pete Marsh]

I believe there was a survey of the entire FSAE-A field with both the templates and James the real 95th percentile man. I spoke with Michael about the templates at the time and requested they consider a rule requiring the existing template to fit in the cockpit, but not nessecarily drop in vertically. This would still allow the top of the chasis to curve in for those with high sides that go well above 'elbow room'. Michael didn't think it was such a good idea, mainly because of the possible dificulty of regulating the size of the opening and that such a change would suit our team. I thought another template or simply the existing egress rule would do the trick. Our car is about 3cm wider than the template at the elbow point and the sides come high over the shoulder so you feel absolutly "in" the car. James liked the ergo and had no trouble fitting in or with control comfort. His only complaint was the high sides made egress a little harder but overall feedback was very positive.

The wide foot box also seems excesive but does not cause any issues for us other than looks and weight. It does pretty much mandate a minimum track width though, and major issues for those with suspension and steering within the profile. The combination of the templates and the knee rule absolutly reduces visability and for a 5th percentile female this will be a major problem. (in a car a 95th percentile male can raise knees in).

I think goals of the rule changes are generally safety related. Not only to reduce possibile injuries sustained in a crash but also to ease the extraction of an injured driver after a crash. And also to ensure the genuine ability to be driven by the 95th percentile male. Is there any agreement among the teams on a better way to achieve the safety goals of the changes? If not, then the new rules must be about right. Right??

Pete.

[ben]

Can I clarify - my reading of the templates was that the steering column can go through the area such that you could have the rack under the floor below the driver's knees with the steering column passing between the drivers legs through 90 degrees - is that correct?

As a design judge my view is informed by having designed and built two FSAE cars on top of my industry experience. I contemplating doing a bit of CAD work to get a feel for what needs to be changed under the new regs so that I don't judge people too harshly.

I find that the hardest thing about design judging is remembering just how hard packaging is when designing these cars.

Ben

[Matthew Bell]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by ben:
Can I clarify - my reading of the templates was that the steering column can go through the area such that you could have the rack under the floor below the driver's knees with the steering column passing between the drivers legs through 90 degrees - is that correct?

As a design judge my view is informed by having designed and built two FSAE cars on top of my industry experience. I contemplating doing a bit of CAD work to get a feel for what needs to be changed under the new regs so that I don't judge people too harshly.

I find that the hardest thing about design judging is remembering just how hard packaging is when designing these cars.

Ben </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Glad you asked that question. I had to go back and re-read the proposed wording and it states that "During this test, the steering wheel, steering column, seat and all padding may be removed." Therefore, you could put the steering rack at the bottom of the chassis, remove the steering column, and successfully pass the template through the chassis. This rule change will truly be a packaging challenge, especially for smaller teams like ours.

[ben]

Initially my response was that it was crazy and would make the front of the car look pretty lame but the more I think about it, the more I think they don't go far enough.

I'd like to see fairly fundamental rule changes on maybe a 5 year cycle. Obviously we can't have a new brief every year like aero design, but FSAE design is fairly stagnant and it would be good to see teams being forced to think a bit more.

Ben

[Matt N]

Regarding the internal cross section, it says that "The only things that may encroach on this are the steering wheel, steering column and any padding..." You wouldn't have to disassemble your car to pass.

Ben, packaging requires that you run a bottom mount rack - unless somebody wants to run 13" wheels and some control arm angles straight out of today's F1 (upward sloping, RC in the wrong place). Top mount racks inline with top wishbones and any sensible suspension geometry, and 1" ground clearance, put the template either through the rack or through the floor of the car.

I applaud the template eliminating shin-breaking rack locations. We designed our new monocoque tooling to pass the 2009 templates. Like Pete mentioned, they get to be a little wide looking from some angles.

Matt

[ben]

I suppose the only cars with top racks will be the sidewinders.

Ben

[Matt N]

yeah - forgot about that.

We should all be happy they aren't requiring that the drivers soles are behind the front axle centerline, which is a common safety rule in other series...

Matt

[Matthew Bell]

Yeah, thank goodness for that. Then all FSAE cars would meet the SCCA A-MOD minimum wheelbase rule, or the drivers would be practically standing up to keep the wheelbase down...

[Ianb]

Our current car fits the 2009 minimum opening cockpit templates. It added less than 1kg to our design. It does make the front look a lot bigger, but thats a new challenge to make it look sexy and we think we have come up with the idea.

Matt N says Western Washington have changed to comply with the rules, has anyone else designed their car to fit the templates?

The car looks much safer and is just about the right size to fit our real life 95th percentile guy. The &lt;1kg weight penalty equates to very little on the track.

The templates had a small change in design for us, I guess RMIT and Deflt would have a bit more of a radical change. The real world keeps changing so why not FS/FSAE.

[Steve O]

We are fairly close to compliance with this rule and it will require minimum changes to be compliant next year. I think it's a very welcome change, the car is much more comfortable for the driver and will be much easier to drive. I agree that weight added to be compliant with the rule is negligible. I think the rule to be more concerned with is the knees together rule. We are nearly compliant with this rule as well but the steering column collar gets in the way a little.

Steve

[James Morris]

I've been playing around with the new rules and designed a quick chassis in cad, and I think the rules are a little short sighted and contradict other rules. The first problem with the new rules that I've found regards the 5th % female rule. If the front hoop is made big enough so that the 95th % male legs can be bought in front of the steering wheel plane, the 5th % female will not be able to see over the front roll hoop very easy.

The rule regarding template X does not seem full fought through either, what happens if the cars is a space frame with bars above the side impact structure, if these bars are smaller than template X the car could still be legal but how would this be tested? A tape measure...hmm accurate!

If the template X rule is to ensure that the cockpit is of adequate size, it doesn't take into account that the front and main rollover hoops can be angled away from each other making the effective opening larger. Also this rule does not take into account where the drivers head is relative to the main roll hoop (in front or under) as a car with the drivers head under the roll hoop could have a significantly larger cock pit than the template with cockpit carrying on behind the main roll over hoop.

If template x is also designed to increase elbow room for steering its silly, it does not take into account the vertical height of the steering wheel and the position of the drivers body. If the steering wheel s is low and the driver is sitting low, yeah the driver may need more room for his elbow to gain large steering lock, but the car should be marked down in the design stage for this and if he/she can't get enough steering lock during the dynamic competitions this will show in the times and hopefully the team will lean from its mistake. In our car last year the steering wheel is located quite high placing your elbows above your lap there for we would not require the extra space template X would give.

Template Y is a strange rule. I think the point of it is to get rid of steering racks (and rightly so) in front of your shins and prevent other items like dampers and there supporting structures from pinning your legs into the chassis in the event of a crash. Fair enough safety should be the number one priority of the chassis designer. But why so big? 350mm vertical is fine but with the horizontal size also being 350mm!!!

Say you design a chassis to meet this new rule with the lower pick up 400mm apart this means that the upper pick up points are going to be around 500mm apart. You are going to have to have some large padding in there to stop your legs knocking around. Either that your people will put their wishbone offset on the upright increasing unsprung weight.

And also the lower pickup point will likely be half way up a chassis member rather than a node, as to give the 5th % female a chance of seeing over the front hoop the lower member of the front of the chassis will not be able to be a raised design. So if the car does have a crash these unsupported points would be more likely to fail causing leg injuries.

Personally I'm going to have my pedal box so it can be adjusted to within a 100mm of the front roll hoop... http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

[Ianb]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Moz22:
The first problem with the new rules that I've found regards the 5th % female rule. If the front hoop is made big enough so that the 95th % male legs can be bought in front of the steering wheel plane, the 5th % female will not be able to see over the front roll hoop very easy.

</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

we have raised the 5th percentile female with a different seat to this to cope, yes you have the problems of raising CoG, but the 5th percentile female is 53Kg(116lbs) lighter than 95th percentile male, so its all swings and roundabouts.

[Steve O]

We came up with a solution that does not require raising the front roll hoop very much. Raising the roll hoop is the obvious solution and that isn't what the judges want to see. They are changing rules like this because the judges are sick of seeing the same car every year designed better than the previous years car. They want to see ingenuity, creativity, and solutions to problems that are not always the easy thoughtless way out.

Don't be surprised if over the next few years they introduce a number of new rules with the front end. If I were a gambling man, I would put my money on them requiring feet behind front axle centerline within the next few years...that is rule with almost every open car circuit out there. They have already informally mentioned this a few times so it probably would not be a bad thing to get your freshman looking at!

Steve

[rjwoods77]

SteveO,

I dont think the intent of the judges is to mix it up. People for years have not designed the cars for the intent of the comp in terms of fitting a broad range of drivers/customers so they are now enforcing rules that existed somewhere else to force the students to take the design criteria seriously. Our rule book is created from a number of different rule books in the world including FIA F1 and SCCA. Our rules were not handcrafted for a special racing series for special formula sae students. The judges seem to just add rules from time to time that already exsist somewhere else when they feel the students are violating/not living up to the engineering design competition they judge us on. I think they were left out originally to give us breathing room to try new ideas and not smother us. Some/most teams have taken this for granted and they are just realing us back in to reality of the intent of the comp.

Look at rule 13:1

http://www.autoracing1.com/PDFs/2006/2008_F1_TECHNICAL_...wing_alterations.pdf (http://www.autoracing1.com/PDFs/2006/2008_F1_TECHNICAL_REGULATIONS_21_12_2005_showing_a lterations.pdf)

Look at page 104 and a bunch of others. Look familiar

www.sccatimetrials.org/pdf/GCR2007.pdf (http://www.sccatimetrials.org/pdf/GCR2007.pdf)

[James Morris]

http://www.gurneyflap.com/Resources/_dsc1258.jpg


After reading the rules mentioned above I feel the 09 regulations are even shorter sighted than it thought before! Template Y is a blatant rip off of drawing 3, just made even bigger! This in my mind makes this rule silly still!

Just look at the front suspension set-up on a modern f1 car, high roll centre, IC pointing up (even if they form an IC). It can get away with crazy suspension like this due the car having a massive down force.

So in my mind someone had a "good idea"� after looking at these rules and copied and pasted them into ours with safety just in mind, they did not stop to see how this would affect the design of a SAE car.

Just ask yourself how different a sae car is to a formula 1 car, do you see formula 1 cars weaving through cones at 20 mph and how many spaceframe formula 1 do you see?

The only good I can see from this rule is that it will take away all the shin breaking designs. But why just not state in the rules a proximity rule to the shins and give Percy some legs! That way more design freedom remains.

Heres a quick picture of ugly duckling designed to the new rules.

http://photos-c.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v167/179/67/529785397/n529785397_1962834_311.jpg

[Matt N]

I would like to add that due to the differing torso lengths between the 225lb man and the 100lb woman, there is absolutely no way to place safety belts (notably the shoulder belt anchorages) in places where the belt angles are right for both. I don't think teams are going to be happy to install two or three seatbelt mount tubes.

Matt

[woodstock]

I don't like the 350x350 rule but it it's very likely that it will be in the 09 rules, but the front axle in front of feet rule would be silly. The corners would have to be bigger radius to fit the longer cars and that means more speed and that is certainly more dangerous than the current fsae designs. I think Pat Clark is in favour of bringing in that rule and it would be interesting to see what he thinks about it.

[Steve O]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Rob Woods:

I dont think the intent of the judges is to mix it up. People for years have not designed the cars for the intent of the comp in terms of fitting a broad range of drivers/customers so they are now enforcing rules that existed somewhere else to force the students to take the design criteria seriously. Our rule book is created from a number of different rule books in the world including FIA F1 and SCCA.

... Some/most teams have taken this for granted and they are just realing us back in to reality of the intent of the comp.

</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I guess I was not clear enough because that was pretty much my point exactly. I was not implying that they are making up the rules, just that they are taking away our breathing room to bring engineering back to a competition that is first an engineering competition and second a race.

In response to the thing about longer wheel base to move your feet back, sure you will be a little bit longer, but I have seen cars out there now with a 68-74" wheel base which is more than enough to get your driver behind the front axle. With our frame this year, we could do it with a 65" wheelbase...it would be tight but it can be done...just remember that with your new X template compatible front end, you have a lot more room to bend your knees.

Steve

[PatClarke]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">I think Pat Clark is in favour of bringing in that rule and it would be interesting to see what he thinks about it. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hi all. Yep, I would be in favour of that rule change. Why?

Well, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the 'feet behind the axle' rule is almost universal in motorsport for a good reason. Safety.

It protects the drivers feet and lower legs in a frontal impact. Having seen pix of some FSAE cars that have been crashed in practice (Cornell a couple of years ago was one) I'm glad it wasn't my feet and legs that needed to be extracted. It has been suggested that one reason the rule hasn't been changed is to dissuade people from using these cars in other forms of motorsport. Be that as it may be, teams still run these cars out of competition in hill climbs and on race circuits. 10 minutes perusing YouTube will adequately illustrate this.

I think the SAE, IMECHE, JSAE, VDI etc all need to realise that these cars do run out of FSAE competition and so have some responsibility for the safety of drivers. If the formula more closely fit with mainstream motorsport, then there might be more interest all over the world and more support from motor sport savvy sponsors. 'Autocross' is an almost totally US type of competition. FSAE/FS is no longer a totally US competition.

Secondly, it would be an interesting way to stir up the formula and generate new thinking.

I have discussed this with several judges. David Gould smiles and says that his hillclimb cars go around tight corners and they don't have short wheelbases.

And, surely moving the cones would be a very simple way to adjust the competition if needed.

BTW, it is perfectly possible to build a competitive FSAE car right now that meets the 'feet behind the axle' rules. Look at the car from Deakin University in the pictures from FSAE-A. This car doesn't quite make it, but is very close.

Cheers
Pat

PS, while we are at it, let's mandate realistically sized main roll hoops and let's ban suspension mounted wings.
PC

[ben]

Can someone explain to me why the position of the front wheels relative to the driver has any influence on safety?

If I drive into the back of another car and shear the wheels off then have a big impact with a wall what difference does it make where the wheels were?

What matters is the amount of energy absorbing material in front of the driver's feet not where the wheels are.

The reason you don't want to be in a frontal impact in and FSAE car is because there's no regulatory requirement for it to survive a sensible frontal impact - if it did there would be.

I'm totally against a rule specifically designed to allow FSAE cars to compete in sprints and hillclimbs. FSAE is an engineering exercise not real motorsport.

Ben

[rjwoods77]

Pat,

I always thought it would be best to adopt SCCA A Mod rules but with 610cc engine capacity restriction(maybe 1" restictor to compensate for heavier car), no minimum wieght rules, allow traction control and make it 2"up/2"down minimum for the suspension rule. This will really make aero really worth the benefit. The series is really getting to big for you guys to handle so this will weed out the "should do mini-baja" financed teams which is slowly happening anyway. These template rules coming in are going to make for the cars about A-mod sized width wise and a behind the front axle rule will meet the 70" minimum wheelbase for that class unless you do some sort of weird car. We are designing these cars for a customer but I cant think of one who would invest this kind of money and only be able to run it on an autocross. If they were built to SCCA/FIA rules then the comp makes more sense because you could see the car as something that could run autocross, drag racing, road race and actually be safe. These car can be fast enough to mandate NHRA cage rules in their current form which they currently do not meet but A mod rules meet the NHRA index last I checked. The added costs really wouldnt be that bad. Maybe about 500 dollars more in material costs beacause of larger steel requirments. It technically wouldn't be that much of a jump for these guys to make one either. Maybe mixing up the engine rules a little bit would be cool as well now that I think of it. Allow diesels and rotaries. I would love to see a P-port intake and exhaust single rotor engine out there. Okay I am getting ahead of myself but I think your suggestions would actually make for a more viable series and a better jump off for future race engineers.

[PatClarke]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">FSAE is an engineering exercise not real motorsport. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ben, I absolutely agree, but I am a realist. These things DO get run in hillclimbs etc whether we like it or not, and so I think we all should have an interest in not hurting people in 'our' cars just because of the inappropriate use by students etc.

Talking with Steve Daum about this subject after the FSAEA event, Steve said "We cannot control stupidity" and I agree with this, but we can surely put in place a set of rules that make the results of that stupidity less painful. Sometimes people need to be protected from themselves =] =]

Another option would be to add a 'Crash Test' element to the competition as the last event. Each car is loaded with a crash dummy and fired into a wall at a speed that ensures these cars will never compete ever again. ;-)

Cheers
Pat

[Steve O]

I would love to see the introduction of diesels and rotaries, I think it would really put a new twist of creative ways to make power on the track.

Back on the topic of the behind the front axle... Ben, you have to look beyond just a crushing frame. The front axle line contains a lot of moving parts that could potentially end up going through your legs. Think of a common diagonal frontal impact (as though you got pushed into the wall coming out of a corner). If your a-arms are located around the drivers knee you are looking at your wheel components going straight into someones femur...if you break your femur it is both very dangerous and very painful for the same reason. The muscles in your upper leg are very powerful, obviously, and a break of your femur causes the bone be pulled upward with the bones then overlapping and grinding against each other making it painful and leaving a chance of cutting your femoral artery, causing you to bleed out in a matter of minutes and die. Now in order for that to happen we are talking about a serious impact that we should not see in our competition but remember, our cars are not designed for our competition, they are designed for the average weekend autocross racer who is going to go out on whatever local track and race.

Besides, think of how simple it would make the design of your front end. I don't know about your team but with our car the design of everything in the front end takes of a lot of trial and error with mock ups to position everything (shocks,rocker arms, steering rack,etc.) in a spot that is functional and allows the driver to comfortably and safely operate the vehicle. In addition to all of that, physical and visual feedback is huge on how a driver handles a vehicle. With the wheels back at your knees, your visual feel of the drive is that of a truck. It feels boxy because you are rotating the front of the car around your knees. A car with a similar wheelbase but the wheels in front would feel like driving a car visually and therefore a more natural switch for your weekend hobbyist autocross racer.

I have to agree with you that this is supposed to be an engineering excercise; however, I'll say again, the goal is to design a car for a real motorsport, NOT for FSAE.

Steve

[begreer]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> Think of a common diagonal frontal impact (as though you got pushed into the wall coming out of a corner). If your a-arms are located around the drivers knee you are looking at your wheel components going straight into someones femur...if you break your femur it is both very dangerous and very painful for the same reason. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

You could prevent this by putting anti-intrusion bars across the A-arm, so that they cannot enter into the chassis.

[VFR750R]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Steve O:

Think of a common diagonal frontal impact (as though you got pushed into the wall coming out of a corner). If your a-arms are located around the drivers knee you are looking at your wheel components going straight into someones femur...if you break your femur it is both very dangerous and very painful for the same reason. The muscles in your upper leg are very powerful, obviously, and a break of your femur causes the bone be pulled upward with the bones then overlapping and grinding against each other making it painful and leaving a chance of cutting your femoral artery, causing you to bleed out in a matter of minutes and die. Now in order for that to happen we are talking about a serious impact that we should not see in our competition but remember, our cars are not designed for our competition, they are designed for the average weekend autocross racer who is going to go out on whatever local track and race.


Steve </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

very grusome, glad you could share

The cars are designed to win the competition ie. goal of competition. Weekend autocrosser is an imaginary end user, but these cars are not actually sold to weekend autocrossers. You receive no points for the car being safer for the weekend autocrosser. That isn't to say you couldn't make the car very autocross friendly, but it's a voluntary decision the judges don't and shouldn't care about.

[ben]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by VFR750R:
very grusome, glad you could share

The cars are designed to win the competition ie. goal of competition. Weekend autocrosser is an imaginary end user, but these cars are not actually sold to weekend autocrossers. You receive no points for the car being safer for the weekend autocrosser. That isn't to say you couldn't make the car very autocross friendly, but it's a voluntary decision the judges don't and shouldn't care about. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Exactly - it's a role-playing exercise.

Pat - I completely disagree. If you run an FSAE car at a high speed sprint hillclimb you deserve whatever's coming to you. Much as I've argued with Steve Daum about many things in the past I agree with him completely on this.

If the cars are really designed for autocrossing lets implement A-Mod regs as per Rob's suggestion. Until that point I think we should stop pretending that FSAE cars are real race cars or ever should be.

Ben

[rjwoods77]

Ben,

Just to calrify. I said A-mods are the closest thing to what we do and if Pats' suggestions are in fact increasing saftey with feet behind the centerline and larger roll hoop requiremnets, and since we adopt many larger car rule sets, we might as well make it an A-mod legal car by just adding ballast and turning off any traction control. The rules required for frames on those things meets most rules for other race forms such as drag racing so to me it would make sense to allow us to design a car that CAN be used somewhere else than an autocross. So my point was if we are going to design a car for an autocross then lets implement rules that allow the car to run other places than an autocross since everyone tries to do just that. This will help to "control stupidity" through assuming a more reasonable end use.

[Marshall Grice]

The frame design rules for Amod are much less safety oriented then FSAE rules are. Namely you can make the main roll hoop out of 1"x.065 tubing for cars less then 1000lbs.

[rjwoods77]

It says 1.375x0.95 for under 1500lbs in the 2008 GCR rulebook. What page are you looking at. Now that I mention it I cant seem to find A-mod page in the book. Where the hell did it go?

[Steve O]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by ben:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by VFR750R:

The cars are designed to win the competition ie. goal of competition. Weekend autocrosser is an imaginary end user... </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

...Exactly - it's a role-playing exercise.

Ben </div></BLOCKQUOTE>


Exactly, it is a role playing exercise and we should play the role! As I believe you said before, this is an engineering competition first and the goal you are supposed to have in mind as an engineer is that you were hired to serve a specific group of people.

I'm not die hard for this rule, I just would not be surprised if they add it. You can argue that it is a dumb rule until you are blue in the face but once it's in the book you don't have a choice. The rules committee has mentioned it before. Honestly once you overcome the initial struggle of implementing it into your design it makes a lot of the front end much easier to design...components can be placed in an as needed location instead of an accommodating position for driver comfort.

[woodstock]

[/QUOTE]

Talking with Steve Daum about this subject after the FSAEA event, Steve said "We cannot control stupidity" and I agree with this, but we can surely put in place a set of rules that make the results of that stupidity less painful. Sometimes people need to be protected from themselves =] =]

[/QUOTE]

That argument sounds to me like the kind of thing that is happening in the UK with 'health and safety'. Scared of liability i.e. law suits, every workplace, university etc. is restricting the tasks anyone can perform; and to be able to do them you need risk assesments for the stupidest things.
I hate it, protecting people from themselves is stupid. I agree that there must be some sort of warning of risk but what is hapenning is the safety is brought on by stopping you from doing anything that could get you hurt.
I think this is cripling the UK engineering students because they come out knowing anything about real world engineering cause they can't experience it (FSAE involvement helps that a lot that's why it's great).

Back to rules stuff - I think the cars are perfectly safe with the current rules if run in competition style speeds and tracks, which are defined in the rules, so the only thing that would be needed is to put a sentence in saying that if you do choose to run it on a proper track or event that's your responsibility.

[Mike Cook]

Does anyone else think it is a huge waste of time and money to build a race car for ONE event? I surely do, and it kills me everytime we decomission an old fsae car. I wish the rules forced us to build a car that was strong and safe enough to race in real racing conditions. Maybe we could participate in some of the collegiate Legend series or hold a few events at karting tracks. Even some of the slower speed road tracks could be fair game. Hell I wouldn't be opposed to racing at an oval track.

Yes, we learn a lot about engineering racecars and managing teams when involved in fsae, but we definitly don't learn anything about what it takes to run in a real racing series month after month. Also, if there were more outlets to race fsae cars (other than competition) we could sell old cars to the general racing public.

I have no problem with rules change, since after all, as long as everyone has the same rules, its a fair ballgame. BUT, if we are going to change this rules maybe we could go a bit further so that the car can be atleast halfway safely raced (excluding hill climbs, thats some dangerous shit right there).

A few things come to mind:

-Feet behind the front axle
-A bigger side impact crush area (i.e. more space between the side impacts and your body)
-Gas tanks a certain distance away from headers, exhaust, etc.


Now I know some of you probably sell your old cars to local autocrossers and such, and most of this might not apply to you. However, now that the competition is international, what will the foreign teams do with old cars?


The flip side of this argument as I see it is that most teams wouldn't participate in any kind of collegiate fsae series because they're always too busy building and being behind schedule. Every time I try to orgnaize anything, no fsae teams want to come, whether it be a local autox or a track rental...So i'm probably in the minority with my statements.

[ben]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Mike Cook:

Yes, we learn a lot about engineering racecars and managing teams when involved in fsae, but we definitly don't learn anything about what it takes to run in a real racing series month after month. Also, if there were more outlets to race fsae cars (other than competition) we could sell old cars to the general racing public.
</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Without wanting to sound rude, this shows the problem with career FSAE'ers. Really you should do FSAE for 2-3 years max and then get out into the real world and get a job in racing.

FSAE proves you have the engineering ability to be strong in a junior role within a professional racing environment - that is where you should learn the week to week knowledge.

We shouldn't confuse FSAE with professional motorsport, and we shouldn't be making rule changes that allow FSAE cars to compete in other events.

I'm all for some big rule changes simply to make the teams think a bit more, but not if it takes them in that direction.

Ben

[Mike Cook]

Without wanting to sound rude, I do have a job in real racing. Thank you very much.

I don't really understand your point. Week to week skills should only be learned in pro racing? If I have the ability to learn those skills in college I will be more desirable to my employer. Why shouldn't I then try to go out and learn them?

I'm not trying to confuse FSAE with professional motorsports, but a lot of people put a hell of a lot of time into these cars and to only race them once a year is a real shame.

[Ianb]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">
I'm not trying to confuse FSAE with professional motorsports, but a lot of people put a hell of a lot of time into these cars and to only race them once a year is a real shame. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Get you uni to go to other events, there are 9 around the world in one year.

[VFR750R]

Most teams are designing and building their cars 6-7 of the 9 months they're at school every year anyways. I agree the racing is the fun part but the learned value for engineering is much lower.
If you want to go on the road every week in nascar as a tuner or team engineer then you probably should be racing every week on your own but i think the purpose of fsae is to teach the engineering side which is typically not at the track. There is nothing preventing anyone from getting a go-kart, dirtbike, dragcar, ect. to race every week.
I think a major change to Fsae would either take away from the engineering or would cost teams a lot of money. Racing costs a shitload of money. Even though so many teams compete in fsae, only a low percentage live within 2 hours of each other.
Competing against local enthusiasts might be fun but you won't learn engineering there except to apply the engineering method to tuning the car which you can learn practicing for the real event.
i guess my point is depending on what job in the 'real' world you want fsae could be adapted in 1000 ways to better focus on that skill. Going for an engine job, an employer would rather you been dynoing engines every weekend, coming up with new tests, and instrumentation to measure results then going to the track. Most engineering firms (not racing) would rather you engineer parts and come up with unique and effective ways to test those parts in the lab like they would be run in the car without actually running the car.

[Steve O]

I will agree that FSAE should be kept primarily an engineering competition. But the rules do change every year and sometimes they are major rules. They have to do this or you wont learn. You will just copy the previous teams car. Plain and simple the judges are getting sick of the lack of ingenuity at the competition. Their exact words, " The cars are excellent racing machines, but I don't see where it required the engineer." People are photocopying designs and only changing what they did not like about the previous car. By changing the rules it forces the new team to THINK and be CREATIVE. If you have to spend more money to accommodate the new rules you are most likely thinking like a consumer NOT like an engineer. Part of being an engineer is to realize you have a problem and realize that you have a certain amount of resources to fix this problem. The judges don't want to see you spend more money, they want to see you learn how to think critically and creatively. I fail to see how putting the front axle in front of the feet is a life altering change. If they do it, suck it up and fix it.

This all started because I expressed that I had a gut instinct they would do it because it has been mentioned...more than once. I wasn't saying they should or definitely will add that rule. However, I may have changed my mind with everyone wining about it so much. It just shows you are afraid to come up with something new and venture into unmarked territory... someone once thought the world was round and they all thought he was crazy, will you be willing to stick by your creations and ideas even if people think you are crazy? Probably not if you are afraid to move the relative position of the front wheels of your car by 12 inches.

To those of you who think these cars should be designed to compete in events outside of FSAE, you should do your research, I would like to inform you that SCCA has ALREADY made a class to accommodate FSAE vehicles and has an FSAE specific class for finals. I would also like to add that I too believe that it is someone's own prerogative if they want to use this car for other than its own intended purpose and I would agree that changing a rule SPECIFICALLY for protecting such people WOULD in fact be silly, but as said above that was NOT the intended purpose of this discussion initially.

Stop wasting your time complaining about rules that don't even exist and start spending your time on figuring out how to win the competition by meeting the rules that do exist.


Steve

[ben]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Mike Cook:

I don't really understand your point. Week to week skills should only be learned in pro racing?
</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes.

FSAE is about designing and building a car within a year to race at one or maybe two competitions.

Any rule changes that make the cars raceable in mainstream formulae would dilute the engineering element of the competition.

If you want to race it more - set up events like Toronto's shootout or race in more than one comp. There are 9 worldwide as has been pointed out.

Ben

[Kirk Feldkamp]

Maybe I'm smoking crack, but engineering has a LOT more to it than simply analyzing the crap out of a problem. Yes, I fully encourage doing analysis during the design phase, but that's such a small part of the overall picture. The teams that do well are not the teams that do mounds upon mounds of analysis... rather, they are the teams that get a 'close enough' design done early enough so that they can go test the bejesus out of the car. Only with a significant amount of focused and directed testing time will an FSAE team really get anything out of their car.

Mr. Richard Childress Racing and Mr. Dunlop Motorsport are arguing that there isn't much value to going racing. (HA!) Maybe by that level of motorsports there has been so much recorded testing and the people on the teams have so much experience that you can simply dial back doing a ton of testing, but I still don't buy it. My experiences with most FSAE kids and almost ALL fresh-out graduates is that there is a supreme lack of engineering testing in school. This is the one of the primary things I would look for in an applicant. Based on the output, I estimate universities in the U.S. have all but eliminated lab instruction, and more importantly test design, as a requirement to graduate. Yes, some engine development can be done in the lab and not out racing... but for guys that do chassis and suspension work, there isn't a whole lot most people can do to substitute track testing.

Most teams that I've talked to follow this same neverending cycle of design, race at comp, rinse, repeat. Many (or most) teams completely forget all the problems they had the year before and go back to a clean sheet design! How can a team ever make progress if that's the testing regimen that's followed? There's not enough time, money, or manpower on almost any FSAE team to carry on like that year after year and do it right. I'm a big believer that almost every FSAE team out there needs to move the focus off of analysis and fabrication and on to testing. Can anyone honestly say they've ever over-tested? Quite the contrary, it's usually called "being prepared". Year in and year out it's proven at competitions around the world that teams that place a premium on testing place higher than teams that focus on design and building.

It's time to shoot the engineer and go drive the damn thing.

[VFR750R]

I agree with you fully that testing and tuning are vital parts of the engineering experience and are probably the most important parts of making the car go fast. You don't have to race however to learn these things which was my point. There's a difference between track testing and racing. Everything you said can be done track testing the car...which is VERY important and it was not my intention to say design is the most important part of engineering. A day in a parking lot going over camber or ackerman or toe or shock settings will be much more helpful and fun then sitting around waiting for your turn and doing 6 laps at an autocross.

My opinion is slightly biased of course by the 'no data-acquistion' at races, but we always learn more per day testing then racing. Some things can only be learned racing, like 'oops I forgot to put the brakepads in at the lab'. The forced foresight into proper prepartation for what-ifs happens only in real racing.

[Big Bird]

Thanks Turbotwig, for one of the wisest posts I've seen on these forums in recent times. Unfortunately with all the noise on these boards of late, gems like this just get buried.

FYI, Mr Claude Rouelle was bending my ear at the Oz comp about exactly the same thing - that no-one ever gets around to testing. Design, fabricate, test for maybe 1-2 weeks (days?), compete - repeat. Little build-up of knowledge, little knowledge transfer, too much emphasis on analysis and next to none on verification.

We are involved in a product development project, and that involves designing, manufacturing and then testing. Ignoring any of those three key elements is an invitation to failure.

Cheers all,

[Pete M]

Turbotwig, VFR, Bigbird, couldn't agree more. I've been to 4 comps now, and there was only one where our car came close to living up to its potential, FSAE West 2006. Why? Because we tested the bejesus out of the thing. It's one of the things i love about going to an overseas comp. Suddenly, you've got a good couple of months and a car that's more or less complete. The amount you learn and the amount the car gets faster is simply astounding.

Somehow, we never find the discipline to give ourselves that time before the car's first comp (Aus for us). I do think a lack of respect for testing and verification is to blame. It always surprises me how many people are willing to put 11 months of effort into a car, and then settle for it only performing to maybe 70% of its potential because it wasn't tested. And then the next year, deciding to change it all and ending up right back where they started. Convincing them they'd be better off making minimal changes, really understanding car and tuning it to its potential is very hard to do.

[VFR750R]

i once heard from an F1 engine chief, "simulations and math are nice, but there is no replacement for phyical testing".

[ben]

Turbotwig,

I couldn't agree more. What you're talking about is testing. That's very different from racing the thing week in week out.

In my experience if you're testing significant things at a race meeting you've dropped the ball somewhere beforehand.

Of the two cars I was involved with the first was a largely evolutionary design that was finished early and thoroughly tested. It was third overall at FS until an electric water pump seized that had done nowhere near the hours it should have done.

The next year we made a concious decision to change just about everything on the car because we were sick of doing the same thing all the time, and although we were top half at FS the whole thing was much less refined at comp due to the lack of testing.

I still think it's crazy to adapt the rules to run these cars in sprints and hillclimbs. Whether you build the thing in time to test before comp is an entirely different debate.

If you can genuinely design and build the car in 8 months, do three or four full days testing then do two comps plus a full year's worth of credits towards your degree I'd be amazed if you wanted to race the thing every weekend at a sprint or autocross event.

Ben

[Brett Neale]

I completely agree with the testing requirement of this project. It's always so damn underused that teams with good cars don't live up to their full potential at comp, simply because it's not tested and tuned to it's full potential. We had quite alot of on track testing over 3 months in on UARC07, and the times were consistently tumbling every session we went out. The thing is though, there's PLENTY more testing we'd like to do.

That being said though, all the testing in the world can't prevent stupid little things like a fuel leak from keeping you off the track for the whole of Saturday (urgh...).

And the other thing - the testing phase is the most fun part! Not to mention the most rewarding. There's nothing like seeing your year's worth of work hooting around a racetrack - doing what it was designed to do!

[Mike Sadie]

I agree that testing as much as possible is the way to end up with a reliable, fast car. However, I can imagine there are many teams that cannot afford to test every weekend for 2-3 months. Tires and fuel are very expensive, most bearings, critical fasteners (in our opinion), and seals should be changed prior to comp. Also, some parts may need to be designed a bit more robust for an extended testing period.

[Greg 08]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> What matters is the amount of energy absorbing material in front of the driver's feet not where the wheels are. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> quote:
Think of a common diagonal frontal impact (as though you got pushed into the wall coming out of a corner). If your a-arms are located around the drivers knee you are looking at your wheel components going straight into someones femur...if you break your femur it is both very dangerous and very painful for the same reason.



You could prevent this by putting anti-intrusion bars across the A-arm, so that they cannot enter into the chassis. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I am still a little unclear on how the wheels forward of the feet is so much safer. I have never worked in safety of any sort, and aside from an engineering degree (and submitting the crush zone report), I have absolutely no background in this area.

It would seem to me like anti-intrusion bars would reduce the chances of Steveo's (very graphic) scenario. I also see a diagonal impact buckling (our failure mode back in the day) the a-arms first, not absorbing much energy and again reducing the chances intrusion.

With the diagonal bracing rules from 06, it would seem to me that a very stiff front end with a crush zone off the front would be more than adequate. Was it ever considered to make the crumple zone frontal area requirement larger or perhaps make it absorb more energy or a lower deceleration rate?

Surely there must be something that I am missing here, otherwise it wouldn't be the widely accepted standard. Is it possible that other series don't count on a very stiff foot box? If anyone has light to shed on the subject, please share. I have a hard time believing this to be the standard simply because of the off chance of a footbox intrusion (although it would be a nasty accident).

[Steve O]

First off, I'll apologize for the graphic scenario, I work in emergency medicine and have a skewed sense of what is gruesome. Second whole rule topic is getting to that point of beating a dead horse with another dead horse;however, in response to your post, The a-arm intrusion could be prevented with anti-intrusion bars, yes, but the rest of the suspension components within the drivers compartment become another story as they are most commonly closed out with .125 6061 or something of the liking. Also, just the fact that you are sitting amongst the suspension makes it more difficult to get out which is why the X template will potentially be in effect for next year.

Also, I agree testing is one of the most important steps to winning this competition;however, the judges aren't necessarily interested in the winning car and the judges and volunteers are the same type of people who get together to make up the rules. I will admit that my team's overall goal is to win the competition and even though the judges want to see a brand new, extremely creative car, I will base my car off of last years car and fix the problems it had to ensure that I have a car that I can complete on time and win with, but that was not at all the point I was trying to make, you all (anyone who was trying to argue that it was a stupid rule) missed the boat multiple times.

I say we start a much more useful post... we could talk about the new calender we just got for our shop... January is SMOKIN'!


Steve

[Kirk Feldkamp]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Steve O:
...the judges and volunteers are the same people who get together to make up the rules....
</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Boy-oh-boy how wrong you are about that! Ever try to get a rule changed? Let me tell ya, the rules committee is a shadowy group of long time FSAE people (mostly faculty advisors and a few SAE higher-ups, from what I can tell) that have teleconfrences a few times a year. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_eek.gif The most important thing you have remember is that the head of the group is Michael Royce, who has a high-level management background at Chrysler. If there's anything you learn when you're working for a big corporation, it's that upper-level management is usually extraordinarily cautious and conservative when it comes to change (their positions usually depend on it!). While I can completely understand the "safe" perspective when it comes to writing the rules for a student racing competition, unfortunately it doesn't always mean that reasonable, logical propositions are accepted by the committee (yes, I'm still bitter http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif). I think the point to take away is that in certain areas (the realities of the FSAE engine rules) the rules committee isn't necessarily comfortable in fixing something that they don't percieve as broken. In other areas (recently chassis in particular) I think they're more comfortable to follow and adapt to what they percieve is safe, often as dictated by rules that are applied by other racing organizations. I'm also pretty sure they're not in the business of making rules changes for the sake of encouraging innovation.

What's my point? Don't assume that you know what's going on up in the heads of the rules committee people. A perfectly reasonable idea to the rest of us will not necessarily fly with the intentions of the people writing the rules.

-Kirk

[Pete M]

Yeah, i'm not sure i get the claim by some that they change the rules to force innovation. That hasn't been my experience. Most of the rules changes in the last few years have been quite logical safety-related issues, like adequately bracing the front bulkhead. They weren't changes for change's sake, they were correcting deficiencies in the previous rules.

If they were trying to force innovation by changing the rules, then they'd just randomly drop the displacement limit to 400 cc one year, while leaving the restrictor the same size. Suddenly, running a fairly stock engine is less competitive and everyone needs to go back to the drawing board, firstly to figure out what the hell engine they could even start with and what they'd have to do to it to meet the rule, and secondly, how they are going to choke the restrictor with it. Rev the head off it? Boost it heavily? Or just cop the 50 cc loss and claim it doesn't matter if you're RMIT. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

I've never seen a rules change of that nature while i've been around. In fact, as kirk mentioned, they seem very reluctant to change rules that seem to be working if safety is not an issue. Considering that this is an engineering design comp, and they *could* radically change the rules on us every year to eliminate carry over of designs, they leave the rules remarkably constant.

[Steve O]

January is still pretty good lookin' though. I'll post pictures if you don't believe me.

By the way, we use the 450 as well and we are making 60 hp in a motor that only weighs 80 lbs. I think its worth it compared to the 80hp 130# (?) F4i motor.

Steve

[Pete M]

Apples to oranges. Didn't you turbo yours? In that case compare it to a 100 hp 600 cc motor.

[Biggy72]

How's the clutch holding up on that 450??

[ad]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Biggy72:
How's the clutch holding up on that 450?? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hows the clutch holding up on the 600?? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[Pete M]

Ha, the smoke just means it's working! Come on, if you can't make the stock clutch slip, you're not trying.

[Biggy72]

All I know is that I've read alot of stuff about singles with turbos shearing off gears, having clutch trouble, and stuff like that. Haven't heard much more than a little clutch slippage coming from the 600's though. Hopefully we'll get to experience some of that smoke in a month and a half or so.

[Pete M]

Good luck, always nice to see another turbo in the field.

Remember, little bit of smoke out the breather means you're melting the clutch, a lot of smoke means you're melting the pistons...

[Steve O]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Pete M:
Apples to oranges. Didn't you turbo yours? In that case compare it to a 100 hp 600 cc motor. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

The 60hp is without the turbo. The motor makes around 50hp stock and with the right intake and tuning you can get more hp out of it even with the restricter on it. I believe RMIT can verify this for me with their numbers as well. FYI our numbers come from our DynoJet dyno (since I know that numbers very on different types of dyno systems.)

By the way...I am impressed that you remembered I had said that. As you said though, apples to oranges, so I did not use those numbers for comparison.

As for the clutch... We have not had a problem with it. An improvement though was moving it from our foot to our hand because it is very touchy when using it in pedal form!

Thanks for the advice and support! We'll need it! We don't plan to run very high boost, just enough to overcome that restricter lag coming out of corners. For the endurance we'll probably run it significantly lower to minimize critical failures. Our use of the turbo this year will be mainly experimental vs strictly performance gain. Our team has never done it before so we will be conservative and air on the side of safety. In years to come when we know what the motor can take, I anticipate that the team will push the limits a little more. As is stands now if at any moment I do not feel comfortable with the reliability of our car, the turbo will be scratched!

Steve

[Pete M]

There's no reason a turbo car can't be reliable. Just realise that you're cutting into the factory factors of safety more than you could NA. Just depends how much it was over-engineered to start with. I'll vouch for the CBR600F4, bullet-proof engine, no idea as to others. There are other issues with turbos on FSAE cars, lubrication especially.

Anyway, this is totally off topic, PM me if you've got any questions.

[Bill R]

Has anyone received anything official in regards to the 2009 rules template rules?

Would items such as a torsion bar and master cylinder or a steering rack be included in the template area?

[Pete M]

Very good point. We aussie teams are designing our 2009 detroit cars now, and they have to be finished in time for the 2008 aus comp in december. So the earlier we know stuff like basic cockpit dimensions the better.

[Pete Marsh]

I think the steering coloum may be removed as well as any padding but thats it. No suspension components (or rack)can be in the template's path as I read it.
Dash facia is something that may be allowed to be moved if it is removeable without tools. I got the impresion we would be able to remove it for the knee raising test if it was designed to be knocked out of the way by the drivers knees. (or simply knock it out while doing the test).

Another question to ask is if the steering coloum top mounting is part of the coloum and can therefore be removed or is not included and have to stay? If it has to stay that will set the hieght of the steering wheel really high, especially for the 5th percentile female!

Pete did you see in the lastest SAE newsleter Micheal pretty much said to use the proposed rules as they are for the teams that have to design now.

Pete

[Chris_S]

Just checked the rules: "During this test, the steering wheel, steering column, seat and all padding may be removed."


"Internal Cross Section:
A. A free vertical cross section, which allows the template shown in Drawing Y to be passed
vertically through the cockpit to a point 100 mm (4 inches) behind the face of the rearmost
pedal when in the inoperative position, must be maintained over its entire length.
The only things that may encroach on this area are the steering wheel, steering column and any
padding that is required by Rule 3.4.14. "Driver's Leg Protection"�.
B. The driver, seated normally with his seat belts fastened and with the steering wheel removed
must be able to raise both legs together so that his knees are past the plane of the steering wheel
in the rearward direction. This action must not be prevented by any part of the car."


Doesn't mention anthing about removing the dash.

[brettd]

Padded dash anyone?

[Bill R]

Hey everyone, this is what I received from the rules committee.

Based on all the surveys we have taken over the last 9 months, it appears that the templates will remain with the dimensions published in the 2008 Rules with a couple of minor "tweaks"�.

One of these "tweaks"� will apply to Template Y. As the steering column will be allowed to encroach into the template area, we will have a 50 mm wide slot in the template running vertically down from the centre of the 50 mm radius cut-out in the top surface, to a TBD point below the mid-height of the template. We will then be able to check for clearance even with a low mounted steering rack by inverting the template as we move it forward in the cockpit.

However, the template will have to clear the steering rack itself, including the gear case at the rack/column junction. One would think that the gear case should fit within the 50 mm radius cut-out, which at that point of the travel of the template with a low mounted rack, will be at the bottom.

Also

The intent of the rule is, apart from any removable padding and the necessity to allow for a steering column with a low mounted rack, to completely clear a 350 mm x 350 mm passageway down the cockpit from the cockpit opening to within 100 mm of the pedals. The only parts that can be within the area of the template will be those noted above (plus the steering wheel, which will be removed for the checks).

Thinking about it again after our last note to you, while we will cut a flap in the template to allow us to fit it around the steering columns, it is not intended to provide more space for teams to install other components, such as your torsion bar and master cylinder. Therefore, we will not change the design of the template in the Rules. The slot will just be an aid to the Technical Inspectors.

Also to clarify things, Template Y will be held vertically and moved forward from the cockpit opening forward to within 100 mm of the pedals. We will allow the template to be moved up and down a little to miss minor obstructions, but it will have to go over any low mounted racks, i.e. above the rack there will have to be a minimum of 350 mm of vertical clearance.


Hope this clarifies things.

Cheers
Bill