2014 FSAE-Australasia

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jonny Rochester

... I was not aware of any public address from the judges about the design of the cars...

---

I was also hoping to see a "Design Review" by all the Judges at the end of this comp, but nothing... Last year there was a very general one, but not relating to any specific cars.

Given the supposed educational nature of the comp, such Design reviews should be the most central part of the whole show. Not much point doing an exam and then NOT being told what parts you got right or wrong. No learning there.

So maybe the DJs can provide a short written review of all the cars here? Please? :)

Or maybe just a list of outstandingly good features on some given cars, and another list of shocking design errors from "...you know who you are!".

Anyway, the Driver Swap reports provide really useful feedback. Perhaps even better than DJ reviews, because they are based on the actual performance of the car on track.
~o0o~

Regarding Claude and DASDs, I interpreted a rapid sideways oscillation of his head, together with words to the effect of "I would no advise...", as a general disapproval of the idea.

But only one person can conclusively clear this up. Claude???

Z

Jonny, I don't know if the Australasia competition actually does it. I would hope so. If not, that's my first suggestion to do is for that to be held next year.

In other competitions, after the top 3 designs are selected, the feedback that is normally provided individually to teams is given publicly to the top 3 as shown in my linked video.

A bit of this is going to be venue-specific for FSAE-A, unfortunately. The organisation this year didn't delve into where people stayed and Calder Park didn't leave the option to gather all around >5PM to review the cars. A place to do the review on a Friday night fell through, and only three of us DJ's were available to do it at the campsite on Saturday night. It should be standardised next year though this would have been a general feedback session akin to 2013 (though with better acoustics). Thus some of this will depend on where the event is held. There are a few other ideas being floated (e.g. staffed translators etc, running the cars through 4 DE meets in sequence, etc).

A 'top x' review might be ideal.

I'm happy to review the cars as I remember them though frankly there were 16 judges/8 areas and they're not all represented here - I would suggest most would want feedback from other areas - however, most can be reached through the SAE throughout the year, indeed a number of teams got in touch with me throughout the year, and at this event a number asked for contact details. Maybe this should be formalised.

For those that saw the DE judging forms (or that have reviewed their feedback), is it sufficient? (Bearing in mind we have ~10 minutes to write and transcribe it).

I'd add that his much is out of step with limiting Design Event to 150 points (from 200).

I wouldn't suggest the driver swap isn't valuable, though I'd similarly not suggest that it's more valuable than the Design Event in the same context.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MCoach

Jonny, I don't know if the Australasia competition actually does it. I would hope so. If not, that's my first suggestion to do is for that to be held next year.

In other competitions, after the top 3 designs are selected, the feedback that is normally provided individually to teams is given publicly to the top 3 as shown in my linked video.

---

This used to be the case, however because Australia has such a small field in 2013 it was introduced to have one set of judges that go around and judge all the cars. This meant there were no discrepancies between area judges and negated the need for design finals. It also meant that more areas/systems are analysed (ie project management, more area specific details, testing/validation) and presented before the judges, and included more team members to show that the collective team knew their stuff rather than 6 individuals. It is something that Geoff Pearson (aka Big Bird) introduced and I believe is working quite well in terms of being able to 'strut your stuff' (for lack of thought for a better description) and show what your team has learnt.

A description on how the design event is now run in Oz is here: http://www.saea.com.au/rules-and-downloads - the Australian addendum links to the event handbook (Part B is the design event details)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MCoach

Jonny, I don't know if the Australasia competition actually does it. I would hope so. If not, that's my first suggestion to do is for that to be held next year.

In other competitions, after the top 3 designs are selected, the feedback that is normally provided individually to teams is given publicly to the top 3 as shown in my linked video.

---

One of the reasons for the new Design Event format was so that the Saturday night could be used as an open Design Review and Event Review session. Maybe 2-3 hours long, vox popping various judges and team members to discuss designs, event preparations, officials feedback, etc. The idea was that this would be of mre benefit to the students than locking four design finalists and the senior design judges away behind closed doors.

The opportunity hasn't been utilized yet.

A major problem has been getting design judges to commit to two days in a row. Might be an idea for next year to sign up judges who can only work both days.

Thank for filling me in, Madeleine.

The gist of structure seems sound, so hats off to our friend Geoff. I'm not necessary looking for a re-presentation of the selected top cars to the judges. I think with as few of entries that exist in Oz, it's a fair system but I could sway either way on it. However, the feedback part is really what I'd like to see. I think by pointing out the highs and lows as GTS has done helps promote consciousness among the competitors of the topics and methods that may otherwise go unnoticed, both good and bad, of those on top.

I think if we didn't have Pat Clarke around constantly reminding everyone of bad engineering practices we would certainly see many more poorly inspired cars with features such as rod ends in bending and poorer ergonomics. The same goes for the opposite end of the spectrum. We know what a bad example looks like (Thank you, Pat!), what about the good examples? That's what I'm getting at.

Fully agreed MCoach. Examples of good design need to be demonstrated to the teams, along with the rationale for them being good design. This is not so the designs can be copied, but rather so that the students might gain an understanding of the underlying mental engagement of a good engineering designer.
Typically, when we criticize, we point out the faults. This is a fair thing. But fault-finding alone only leaves the student with a growing list of things not to do. Creativity is a positive process, so we need to engage the students with what is good design too. As such, I fully agree with the idea of a design critique of the best cars

How do we do this and best promote originality? There's a lot of me-too up and down the grid... which is not what FSAE is about!

There's plenty of career outside of university to take safer bets in :D

I'd like to see an innovation bonus, outside of the Design Event. Up to 50 points bonus available for a genuinely innovative design, to be awarded at judges discretion at end of weekend. Maybe up to 25 available for second most innovative. If they are to be awarded, they are announced at final presentation, but locked in before start of Sunday's track activities (so judges can't fudge results at end of weekend - not saying that they would)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GTS

For those that saw the DE judging forms (or that have reviewed their feedback), is it sufficient? (Bearing in mind we have ~10 minutes to write and transcribe it).

---

I highly recommend giving judging forms to the Teams! We were lucky enough to get extensive Feedback from our DJ Team at FSG14, but the judging form was already a good thing. It was also good for the judges when they where discussing our design after the design Event. Many design decisions of our new car were driven by the short Feedback on the judging form. Bonus: There were bad AND good things listed!

Edit: The forms were filled in during the judging process.

One reason I would be interested in how the judges judged design, is that Monash won again with the same car. In my small mind, I did not expect Monash could win with the exact same design, but I was wrong. Maybe any of the top 15 teams could have won design with the cars they had, with the result determined by how smart the team are at answering questions during judging. It would be interesting to hear those answers, not that I'm expecting we would or should. I maybe showing my ignorance, not sure. I know Monash have simulators to predict competition results, and they target that, and have the resources to micro-manage the comp complete with leaders stationed around the place complete with radios and ear pieces.

But, if we design a car for the weekend autocrosser, should it take 30 people to look after? A good design should be a bit more robust that that surely. A good design would be a turn-key car that can be managed at at event with only 1 or 2 people. But dynamics are after design in the comp, and I'm not suggesting it be changed. Just something to think about.

Hi Jonny,

It's been a while since I was really into FSAE and how the comp works, so this may be out of date:

The stated aim of FSAE is to design something for the weekend autox-er, but as student engineers, if the aim is to win comp, then we'll do everything within the rules to win. Of course, every teams goals are different.

I've heard the simple weekend track car vs. high techy min-F1 thing a lot. I think a high-tech car *would* be easy for 1 person to run on a typical autox weekend. It's just that we aim to win/drive really fast. And for that, you need more people. Race series of all levels have teams behind them at race weekends, do they not? It's just that autox-ing seems to be a more individual effort (hill-climbs in Australia).

Regarding design, I think one just needs to understand why the car designed the way it was. Being able to justify/explain why something was done.

Further, I'm sure most teams will tell you how/why they designed almsot any bit on their car, if they have the time. It's how I learnt most of the stuff I know about FSAE :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jonny Rochester

One reason I would be interested in how the judges judged design, is that Monash won again with the same car. In my small mind, I did not expect Monash could win with the exact same design, but I was wrong.

---

There were small differences however you've a valid point - it's very difficult to police too. To be fair to Monash, they weren't the only team appearing with barely-evolutionary to damn-near-identical designs to prior year/s. Maybe the other judges could chime in, in aero at least the presentation was significantly different to the year prior. Not so the car, however the students involved were considerably richer for the experience, which is the ultimate intent. By the tenant of the rules it flew a little close to the wire in execution. That's just my little realm however, and the scores weren't consistent.

How to police it? Should we? I kinda like BB's innovation prize.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jonny Rochester

A good design would be a turn-key car that can be managed at at event with only 1 or 2 people. But dynamics are after design in the comp, and I'm not suggesting it be changed. Just something to think about.

---

That's the intent. I'd be keen to see the Design Event occupy a higher proportion of overall score.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rex Chan

I've heard the simple weekend track car vs. high techy min-F1 thing a lot.

---

Just to be clear - there's very little mini-F1 about a Formula SAE car (at least none at FSAE-A). The competition's rationale is very different, the resources (esp. skill sets involved) are very different, the project aims are very different. Optional wings, four wheels and independent suspension do not an F1 synonym make.

Consider that to develop a competition bicycle in a student team environment would be a very complicated and contested space. Formula SAE throws students a considerably more complex project by way of lending a scope very likely to exceed any resource budget, and it does so very deliberately. A team then needs to make choices in a very deliberate manner. It's a competition of project management and delivery in a group environment.

It is also, very strictly, not a race event. Formula SAE cars do not race, and the competition is not a race.

I wouldn't be a rush to learn from other teams to that degree. Observe, understand, apply logic and critique. The last bits are the most important. There is too much to copy that's poorly done or poorly understood by its creators, and that's OK, so long as monkey-see-monkey-do attitudes aren't employed. This is a key problem the design judges were cringing over. We need to incentivise original thought; there used to be more of it. There's plenty on the top cars that's less-than-not-ideal, just as there was last year, the year before that, etc. If not for a sharp forthcoming change in rules (I can only speak for aero to this end), we'd see it on next year's cars just because it's on the top car this year. That's not science nor smart.

We need to incentivise original thought.

(\\rant over)

You've touched a raw nerve here Jonny!

I won't hijack this thread (much), perhaps this issue should have it's own, but if you want to know why it is the way it is, just look at the treatment UWAM '12 got! The first car to present a new and genuinely innovative suspension design in recent history, shunned as troublemakers and cheaters by people I used to respect! That is what you get if you stray too far from THEIR idea of an FSAE car.

Many schools and teams strive to win the event, and the recipe that is REWARDED consistently at all the events is long term iterative development with strong and consistent (and skilled) faculty guidance. This is what is required to win in FSAE, simple reality. It is so very true FSAE is a primarily project management competition, but the amount and autonomy of the management being done by students (that turn over each year) varies widely throughout the competition teams.

I am perhaps uniquely qualified to comment on this issue, as I have been with the team through the highs of a World Cup win, to the lows of abject failure, and both types of team structure and philosophy.

I can assure you, going your own way, trying to justify everything on design merit rather than accepted practice, is MUCH harder, but also MUCH more educational. It does not produce points or trophies (or cars) as efficiently.

I'll ask the question of the community, is there a correlation between the successful teams and their cohort career outcomes? Is the quality of student intake and teaching really that much better? Are we rewarding the behaviour that is the desired "ideal"?
I'm not "having a go" at anyone here, just asking the question. At my school, the education is MUCH worse than it once was, and there is little doubt in my mind this has (adversely) affected the teams performance. But is it a competition between students, or schools? It seems to me less than 5% of teams have the structure and resources required to win a comp. What of the members of the other 95%, is their work somehow inferior?

IMO, the comp still achieves great things, but there is little or no connection between educational outcomes and points and trophies for the individual student. In fact I suspect the opposite is the case, that there is more opportunity for the individual to learn and develop in a lesser team. (ie. not World Champ seeking).

I don't think this really matters, as long as you know a lack of trophies does not equate to personal, or educational, failure. Plenty of teams have never won a trophy, but I'm sure they have produced some great engineers.

Pete

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Big Bird

I'd like to see an innovation bonus, outside of the Design Event. Up to 50 points bonus available for a genuinely innovative design, to be awarded at judges discretion at end of weekend. Maybe up to 25 available for second most innovative. If they are to be awarded, they are announced at final presentation, but locked in before start of Sunday's track activities (so judges can't fudge results at end of weekend - not saying that they would)

---

I like the idea, but don't think we should further introduce a "subjective part" into the scoring.
Some designs are really interessting but it's not certain if they are "good". Just being innovative for "innovative reason" is not the way to go in my opinion.

One good example: The inner wheels of Delft this year (one of the most innovative features (besides their tires) that I have seen in Europe 2014). I have no idea about gearboxes and so on, so for me it was an awesome idea, they promoted it really good during design judging and a lot of judges (at least at FSA where I was on the dark side) agreed and gave them "innovation points". A couple of others thought it was a good idea but had some flaws and a "standard" design (like Stuttgart or Zurich) would have been the better choice. So what now? Give them the 50 points? Or give them to Stuttgart because they made the right call not to make such a design?

I would like to see a special award for something like that. Make 3-4 categories and give a trophy to the team with "Best Use of Brown Go-Kart methods", give an award for "Most innovative weight reduction without using CFRP" or "Best Bang for the Buck". That's a nice goal for a team that is probably not competing for Overall Victory in my mind.

In Germany/Austria, the "big stack bullies" (Delft, Zurich, Zwickau, Stuttgart, GFR) "grab" all the special awards for most innovative powertrains (of course), best lightweight concept (of course), and so on. Most special awards correlate with "overall performance" which (sadly) correlates strongly with money, resources and so on. I think that could be changed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pete Marsh

I'll ask the question of the community, is there a correlation between the successful teams and their cohort career outcomes? Is the quality of student intake and teaching really that much better? Are we rewarding the behaviour that is the desired "ideal"?
Pete

---

No! I've never employed anyone from a winning team. That's not to say that there aren't great graduates on winning teams, just that winning itself does not aid careers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pete Marsh

At my school, the education is MUCH worse than it once was, and there is little doubt in my mind this has (adversely) affected the teams performance. But is it a competition between students, or schools? It seems to me less than 5% of teams have the structure and resources required to win a comp. What of the members of the other 95%, is their work somehow inferior?
Pete

---

Oh, you missed a phenomenal discussion after design event...

Good morning,
How appropriate Pete chimed in overnight. The UWA suspension interpretation of a couple of years ago was exactly the case I was thinking of when I proposed an innovation bonus.
I cannot remember the judge's reasoning, and I don't think it was ever released publically. But there was a team who genuinely had a go at something innovative, and for their efforts they received a design score of three points. Out of 150. Now to me that sends a message that if you want to be truly innovative, then you need to prepare to sacrifice all for your cause.
I can speak from personal experience too, having been through all this with our early single cylinder cars at RMIT.
I understand that an extra "subjective" points allocation can make some uncomfortable. But the present judging criteria has to tick so many categorical boxes (powertrain, brakes, chassis, innovation, aesthetics, blah, blah etc etc) that innovation just gets swamped. And who wants to risk losing all (a la UWA) for the sake of getting maybe one or two marks difference in Design?

And don't get me started on quality of education. Now there is a red rag to a bull...

Or the state of Australian engineering.
Same angry bull. Now two red rags...

Geoff, be fair!

The UWA car got a whole lot more than 3 points from the judges initially.
However, their car was far from complete and so suffered a significant point loss from that.

Then they were penalised for late/non submission of paperwork.

I admit that 3 points, when viewed in isolation looks bad, but there was more to the situation than has been expressed here in several posts over the last couple of years!

When a team bring an unfinished car to the event and have failed to meet the document requirements, the result will be a low score, regardless of how 'innovative' the car may be. UWA in Australia in 2011 is not the first time we have seen that happen.

Cheers

Pat

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GTS

I'd be keen to see the Design Event occupy a higher proportion of overall score.

---

GTS,

As Pete and Geoff have hinted at, the last time that happened the car with undoubtedly the most "innovative" chassis/suspension design in the history of FS/FSAE got 3 points out of 200! IMO that single act of Design Judging did more to discourage young Engineers from innovating than any amount of test-track failures.

If you truly want to help produce a better next generation of Engineers, then you must give them a better Education. Simply "incentivising" them with hollow promises of more Design points, when they all know they may well end up with 3/200 (or 1/200?), will only have them doing the same-old same-old, albeit out of carbonfibre-skinned titanium-honeywhatsit.

Education comes from explaining the millions of little details of what works really well, what less so, and what is a guaranteed disaster. All these little details must be repeated over and over again. "Theory" and "practice" must be shown to be constantly affirming each other.

For example, "Now look at this broken wheel-centre for a beautiful practical example of all this fatigue failure theory. See how the stresses from these spokes have...".

Only when good Education is in place will good Innovation follow.

So, once again...

"... maybe the DJs can provide a short written review of all the cars here? Please?
Or maybe just a list of outstandingly good features on some given cars, and another list of shocking design errors ..."

Z

(PS: (Pat just posted.) So, Pat, why have the DJs never made any of that public? How many DE points did UWA-12 actually score, before all those penalties were applied? Do YOU consider their design a good one, and worthy of praise? Would you, or do you, encourage other students to go down that route?)

Geoff;

How about starting with teams needing to present documentation and drawings for last year's car in addition to the current, with evidence of a proper document control system that dates both correctly? (Or just maybe an end-of-year drawing submission under an NDA etc) to be used to judge contribution against the next?

The whole 'did you run last year's car' issue is not rigorously implemented. I agree that we need to incentivize innovation, to do so we need a presentable baseline. I don't want to see a token "Bosch Award" or similar - I want to see points!

Teams of 60+ running broadly similar cars is... a bit ridiculous and unfairly disadvantages those who try something genuinely new with sound engineering reason. It's also contrary to the spirit of the competition. Have mega teams if the resources can be corralled, sure, but have a mega contribution to show for it. The cry (for those that heard it) as the cost event was called out from the winning team of "so what did we win now?" was unsportsmanlike, arrogant, and most importantly (and relative to what the competition's about) totally missed the point.

This recent notion of weighting dynamic events to a greater degree at the expense of design points is a bit silly unless we're talking teams that can reasonably afford to compete with a consistent effort at more than one competition in a calendar year with regularity. F1 teams get 18-20 races to strut their stuff and still blow it a few times a year, the probability of it happening to a FSAE team is considerably higher.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Z

GTS,

As Pete and Geoff have hinted at, the last time that happened the car with undoubtedly the most "innovative" chassis/suspension design in the history of FS/FSAE got 3 points out of 200! IMO that single act of Design Judging did more to discourage young Engineers from innovating than any amount of test-track failures.

If you truly want to help produce a better next generation of Engineers, then you must give them a better Education. Simply "incentivising" them with hollow promises of more Design points, when they all know they may well end up with 3/200 (or 1/200?), will only have them doing the same-old same-old, albeit out of carbonfibre-skinned titanium-honeywhatsit.

Education comes from explaining the millions of little details of what works really well, what less so, and what is a guaranteed disaster. All these little details must be repeated over and over again. "Theory" and "practice" must be shown constantly affirming each other.

For example, "Now look at this broken wheel-centre for a beautiful practical example of all this fatigue failure theory. See how the stresses from these spokes have...".

Only when good Education is in place will good Innovation follow.

---

I think PC has beaten me to it, however the three points was genuinely on a number of other issues also. The last beam UWA car I judged was poorly executed despite a good concept... and the student representing the relevant area shared highest marks at event. The particular student - had either of the aero judges had a job available - would have earned an interview then and there. There are 8 areas of design and the criteria are known.

It is very difficult to judge any magnitude of innovation without a baseline. The rules are specific about carryover, but it's very hard to enforce unless sufficient documentation or equivalent measure is employed to substantiate a baseline. It is without question an area lacking in the current rule set.

Formula SAE does not provide baseline education, Z. As a former university educator I do share your concerns, and there's much that can be done for it, though the competition doesn't reach into university and dictate policy (as much as we might like it to). Education is neither anecdotal nor trial and error. We can provide lists of what worked and didn't within a limited context as observed one weekend a year, under specific conditions and as applied on specific vehicles. A university I was involved with 04-08 + '10 developed a culture of priding itself on working on what worked, putting aside what didn't. First principles didn't make the grade. The resulting culture turned the FSAE team into a broadly trade experience. A meeting is scheduled next week at that particular university to discuss this very issue, which has reached a crisis point.

Education shouldn't reward good features, it should reward good thinking. FSAE is a an avenue to put it in context, which is a long and complex road full of noise, pitfalls, reality checks, compromises, learning and experiences therin. If it doesn't come back to good thinking, there's no loop to close with why a university should support or involve itself in the competition. Particularly given the significant opportunity cost of investing in FSAE against other project-based learning initiatives. It costs a (generally) six-figure sum of money to run FSAE at any given university, and most university departments have about as much in capital expenditure allocation for an entire year - not just the 20 or so students at the core of the competition. Some of the chats at competition with faculty simply - and very seriously - concerned whether or not the competition would feature in their plans in ten years. Five years. Even two years.

We cannot simply reward and compare outcomes. The challenge is considerably bigger, and the competition is designed intentionally such that "million of little details" cannot be run through. The breadth and depth of the scope is intentionally significant to ensure that smart decisions need to be made early on, and executed practically with good technical rigour.

I've no doubt that research for good information shouldn't include assessment of the best in field - there's no reason to go Marco Polo on everything - however this needs to be weighted against a need to be critical about it. The discussion I had with a faculty advisor - concerning why his team absorbed another university's design wholesale in 2013 with little critical scientific rigour beyond it having the most points on the day the year prior - should never happen.

It is too easy to circumvent by incrementally iterating last year's car. This is probably a good and realizable place to start.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Z

So, once again...

"... maybe the DJs can provide a short written review of all the cars here? Please?

Or maybe just a list of outstandingly good features on some given cars, and another list of shocking design errors ..."

Z

---

For those not having the head judge's details, I would be happy to forwards any messages (just PM me) supporting a motion towards complete transparency of the Design Event findings (I really don't understand why it's not done for all static events).

The head judge for this year's comp is considering organising an online feedback session (this unofficial medium seems only to attract me of the 16 judges...) what we can do to enhance and moderate the robustness of the feedback process is probably the subject of a separate thread, which should certainly be put together.

I think I was being fair. My whole argument was to do with the fact that the competition does not reward innovation, or at least not in a way that provides any real benefit for risk taken. I wasn’t pointing blame at anyone. I was simply calling a fact that a genuinely creative and interesting interpretation of the rules, albeit unfinished and with late paperwork, scored only three points, while I have seen some – dare I say – bloody awful cars over the years, scoring much much higher than that. Yes, the judges might have being doing everything to the letter of the law. But an instance like the UWA instance sends off alarm bells in my head that the letter of the law might not be achieving all that we want either.

Now it actually says in the judges marking sheet that “strictly speaking, innovation is extremely rare in FSAE”, which is then followed up by various marking guidelines to give a score out of 10. So, at most, a truly creative design, perfectly understood, gets you 10 points out of 1000. And what does a garden variety cookie cutter car get? 2?? 5?? So you might pull up to, say 8 points on your most pedestrian rivals and less than that on your more top-end rivals. To get those few points, you risk having maybe a new concept that needs a lot of validation, testing, etc. It seems barely worthwhile. When you then consider what you are exposing yourself to in terms of potential losses, it becomes a lot easier just to rebuild last years car –driver training will save a few points from cone hits, we will get our reports in on time since they are all the same as last year’s ones…

Now I of all people am probably most responsible for raising awareness of the points economy in this comp. And at times it makes my stomach turn when I hear teams cop out of stuff because of low reward points wise. But if we want more innovation and creativity, then we simply need more points for innovation and creativity…

Pat/GTS/others, having been involved in both the 2011 and 2012 UWA teams (which presented the "Wheel Pods" and the "Aerobeam"), it's not just the official scores and results that Pete is talking about. Being penalised for an unfinished car and late paperwork is fair enough (although in 2013 three teams didn't compete in dynamics and the lowest design score was 90).

The issue in my mind is that the reception and attitude we received from some circles was extremely unpleasant, unwelcoming and unappreciative of the effort and innovation that was in the concepts. Some people we talked to were very interested, and basically all the students I talked to were keen to learn more and enjoyed seeing how the 2012 suspension worked. Others appeared to approach it with pre-conceived thoughts which made it difficult to discuss what we did, why we did it and how we went about it. After our cars, which were a result of a genuine attempt to innovate, came close to being called outright legal and malicious attempts to circumvent the rules, it suddenly became a whole lot less fun.

Geoff said it right, if you want to do something completely different it can turn out amazing, but be prepared to sacrifice everything to get there.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by luxsosis

Pat/GTS/others, having been involved in both the 2011 and 2012 UWA teams (which presented the "Wheel Pods" and the "Aerobeam"), it's not just the official scores and results that Pete is talking about. Being penalised for an unfinished car and late paperwork is fair enough (although in 2013 three teams didn't compete in dynamics and the lowest design score was 90).

The issue in my mind is that the reception and attitude we received from some circles was extremely unpleasant, unwelcoming and unappreciative of the effort and innovation that was in the concepts. Some people we talked to were very interested, and basically all the students I talked to were keen to learn more and enjoyed seeing how the 2012 suspension worked. Others appeared to approach it with pre-conceived thoughts which made it difficult to discuss what we did, why we did it and how we went about it. After our cars, which were a result of a genuine attempt to innovate, came close to being called outright legal and malicious attempts to circumvent the rules, it suddenly became a whole lot less fun.

Geoff said it right, if you want to do something completely different it can turn out amazing, but be prepared to sacrifice everything to get there.

---

If this is true, this must change. Time for a reflection paper, Geoff?

I'd add that the 2013 scores were rescaled (long discussion). The lowest raw would have been 77, on the 2014 150-point scale this would be 57. No late papers this year.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GTS

If this is true, this must change. Time for a reflection paper, Geoff?

---

For what it's worth, although I'm no longer directly involved, from what I see talking to people involved in the latest competitions and viewing all the feeds/updates etc, things do seem to be improving. That we have yourself GTS here now providing feedback is a sign of that!

I have finals tomorrow, but I think we have sparked a new debate (or struck on old wound...) and have quite a bit to contribute as to the posts from the last 24 hours or so as soon as my dedication to classes blows over.

I'll drop some words soon on my thoughts about this on Saturday...Having stared the chopping block in the face for our entire SAE program for several years now, I can tell you quite about innovation and the complications of keeping a low budget program alive and how that's changed some of the way we do things around our parts. Part of the topics brought up that may be more interesting to explore are the teams converging on each others designs as visual reach has stretched globally making it really easy to say "huh, that's a cool wing, it was part of this year's winning car. I should make my wing look just like that because that's what the winner did." and converging on their own solutions, developing a competitive, but very repetitive formula.

Innovation keeps engineering alive. If it weren't for the creativity and shear genius (madness???) of the human brain, then we'd all have been replaced with computers decades ago.

That's it for now...

I think one of the keys to understanding the design event is to move past the idea of it being an event that rewards the best designed car at the competition. While that might be what we want it to be the reality is that it is the best presentation of the design process that wins.

2014 Oz made that clearer to us than in any other competition. Compared to the eventual winners we arrived with a car that was nearly 20kg lighter (with a larger engine), more powerful, with some truly unique designs, excellent build quality, lower cost (by the cost report), was as fast, more reliable, and put together by a much smaller team (i.e simpler design). We were surprised not to win design.

However Monash clearly trumped us in design presentation. They were professional, and had plenty of people ready to speak to the judges. They had prepared for what the event was rather than what they wanted it to be, and we have learnt a valuable lesson from the experience. Monash knew that it was one of their alternate years (i.e. low development year on a 2 year cycle) and had obviously burnt the candle at both ends preparing a good presentation.

Innovative design has never been well recieved in Australia. Some of the best conceptual approaches in the country did not recieve good marks early on. Early Monash aero cars, RMIT 2003, UWA 2003, RMIT 2004, UWA 2004, Monash 2011, UWA 2012, UQ 2014 (sorry for the missing years and cars). Please note that in 2003 UWA did win design although by the marks rubric it was placed in 6th or 7th before direct intervention by a couple of judges causing what should have been an obvious decision in the first place).

I don't think this is a good situation. I would rate innovation much higher and rely a lot less on a rubric. Many truly great engineering products would fail miserably on a rubric against their competitors. However it is difficult to deny there is a benefit in assessing the students ability to present their design process, insight, and ability to field tricky questions. The event currently targets this rather than the actual design of the vehicle. On that basis the placings were accurate.

Kev

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kevin Hayward

I think one of the keys to understanding the design event is to move past the idea of it being an event that rewards the best designed car at the competition. While that might be what we want it to be the reality is that it is the best presentation of the design process that wins.

2014 Oz made that clearer to us than in any other competition. Compared to the eventual winners we arrived with a car that was nearly 20kg lighter (with a larger engine), more powerful, with some truly unique designs, excellent build quality, lower cost (by the cost report), was as fast, more reliable, and put together by a much smaller team (i.e simpler design). We were surprised not to win design.

However Monash clearly trumped us in design presentation. They were professional, and had plenty of people ready to speak to the judges. They had prepared for what the event was rather than what they wanted it to be, and we have learnt a valuable lesson from the experience. Monash knew that it was one of their alternate years (i.e. low development year on a 2 year cycle) and had obviously burnt the candle at both ends preparing a good presentation.

Innovative design has never been well recieved in Australia. Some of the best conceptual approaches in the country did not recieve good marks early on. Early Monash aero cars, RMIT 2003, UWA 2003, RMIT 2004, UWA 2004, Monash 2011, UWA 2012, UQ 2014 (sorry for the missing years and cars). Please note that in 2003 UWA did win design although by the marks rubric it was placed in 6th or 7th before direct intervention by a couple of judges causing what should have been an obvious decision in the first place).

I don't think this is a good situation. I would rate innovation much higher and rely a lot less on a rubric. Many truly great engineering products would fail miserably on a rubric against their competitors. However it is difficult to deny there is a benefit in assessing the students ability to present their design process, insight, and ability to field tricky questions. The event currently targets this rather than the actual design of the vehicle. On that basis the placings were accurate.

Kev

---

Some interesting thoughts.

I was actually accused of making someone at Monash nearly cry last year :) This year (I'll say it again) the presentation was much better. Very different direction though. Despite being The Original Batmobile (TM), Monash alone didn't have highest aero marks. Nor last year (where the highest mark was lower).

It's not about the best designed car at competition, neither about the best presentation. it's about both, though in terms of design ownership, the latter is a requirement to talk about the former. You can't expect the judges to award mega points to an awesome-looking car that can't be explained by those presenting it. If you're suggesting that points go to the slickest presentation, that's grossly unfair. And inaccurate.

(This, and I think you're missing RMIT 2010 from your list!)

UQ 2014 scored well in every area asides from the one area where their presentation - and knowledge - was severely lacking, and was marked accordingly. And believe me, the two judges concerned tried very hard to extract knowledge beyond the presentation style. Because we want to see all students succeed, particularly where efforts are part of a fundamentally well-designed car.

It does surprise me - and I'm no head judge - that after the marks are in we all head into a room after a long and rigorous process and are asked whether any one team should be marked up or down. I understand it is offered in good faith, to account for anything the rubric may not have accounted for. It is not a completely unfounded decision, there is much discussion, but neither is it structured - which is a concern, as it would leave students without a firm basis as to base future decisions from. Believe me, the judges talk passionately about the creations and deliberate pros and cons at significant length. This year no raw scores were touched. You can begin to understand why, then, rescaling to maximum to give the 'best car on day' maximum points is so contentious. 'Best on day' doesn't mean a great deal. This year's best car in design was simply not as good as last year's. The competition needs relative indications, not least such that standout efforts are clearly identifiable. I don't support getting rid of the rubric (this does't mean things can't be improved, read on).

This is about how well a team's effort can do. In a collective, multidisciplinary, outright sense.

Kev, I'd point out that individual key innovations do not make a complete design. This might not be what you're suggesting explicitly, but let's spell it out all the same. Innovate in any key area, integrate it well, understand the tradeoffs and there's no reason not to score well. Simple. If this is done at the expense of competitiveness in any other area, then don't. The earlier comment on aero (as there were teams in 2014 scoring between 0-10%) counts: innovate wherever you want however if you don't pay aero much attention 364 days a year, don't expect to ring in the points on the 365th. The same applies to any other judged area. For most of my FSAE year I was part of a team building it's own engine. If everything worked as it should have, the engine was a jewel in concept. Mega innovative. The suspension had some nice touches too. Regrettably we discovered (within 10 days of comp), that despite best intentions and completely reflective of our skewed resource allocation, could we not simply bolt the suspension with the nice touches to our jewel of an engine concept and turn up at comp. Unsurprisingly the judges present noted this discrepancy and none were surprised that max points were not awarded despite our team's significant innovation. The competition's about delivering a complete car. Allocate resources accordingly. I'll stress it again - the notion that students won't be able to do everything 'best' in FSAE is intentional. We need to find a better way of rewarding this, and the opposite where the effort has been minimal by comparison.

Reject the notion that innovative design is poorly received in this country. Whether part of a car that did well at comp or otherwise, most I know that were core to innovative designs have gone on to have great careers for which FSAE experiences were pivotal. I hope your students go onto great careers. Not simply because there's a specific degree program going on, but because (if the car is reflective of original student work) they deserve to.

Within that I do, however, share the notion that an capably (or more) resourced team shouldn't be able to turn up with a barely-evolutionary design and compete against more significant design efforts where the are comparably successful. It's a way to win the competition, sure, but we should consider whether it should be. "A formula that wins" isn't even a consistent aim across different university's involvements.

AFAIK currently there really is no mechanism to prove what's new and what's carried over. Having some continuity in judging staff is neither an effective nor reliable control. If such a mechanism were put in place, there'd be a rationale to have teams defend the amount of work actually done, and awarded in points accordingly. I don't just mean 'show us your drawings' - in some instances I have no idea whether or not CFD, aerodynamic testing or the like were even completed by the current team.

I don't mean to harp on it for the sake of it, but let's talk potential solutions.

As for ECU's car - there's a few key things to get right from an aerodynamic perspective. If done, I'm confident it'd have been regularly faster than the eventual winners. I thought ECU's car was technically sweet asides, there was a hell of a lot right, and has considerably more potential as a platform - I actually sought out students to say as much. The strength of the design to the leading team's aero was lesser - the gap was not a function of presentation of the design. If that gap didn't exist, ECU would have won design. it came second by an incredibly close margin, considerably less than the first-to-second margin last year. I'm happy to talk aero offline.

It's going to be an interesting 2015 comp.

(Just FYI Kev, I'm dead tired whilst writing this.)

GTS,

My comments were not a complaint, merely an observation. Monash won the event clearly. The gap in aerodynamics is real and acknowledged. It is a strength area for Monash. ECU has other areas that they out-design Monash, and as you state the finish was close. It would be hard to argue that Aero isn't the most important area for speed since the development of the 'big aero' rules. I would still hold that Monash must have out-presented the rest of the field to take the win. The car was very close to the 2013 car, and I would probably pick a couple of cars that were better designed overall (It is still clearly a very good vehicle). So as I see it the car was in the top three cars there, judges having no definitive measure of what was changed and what wasn't, with the strongest design presentation in the field. Am I missing anything?

I agree that a few innovate parts do not constitute an innovative car. I also agree about resource allocation. To make big changes to the platform some details need to be relegated to the quick and dirty design team to be improved on in iteration 2. The other side of the coin are those focusing on detail design at the expense of platform integration or innovation.

I also want to clearly state that I believe Monash are quite an innovative team. Aero aside, the true innovation for Monash is not in design, but in project management. Their cars have quite conservative changes year to year with some ideas having very old roots, but with good justification. They have developed the vehicle to a point where it is impressively quick and regularly out-performs cars that on the face of it seem better. During the Oz comp they showed how well they cover all aspects of the competition. A couple of items I noticed (not a complete list):

- Professional appearance at all times
- At the skidpad at the ideal time with continuous uninterupted runs (fastest run on the the fifth consecutive skidpad run to win the event)
- Making sure their drivers got extra runs in a row at the end of autocross to keep the tires hot
- Slowing the release of their car into the final endurance to maximise their time spent with fewer cars on the track
- Students following around other teams and reporting back to Scott at a central location. Monash probably had a better idea of what ECU was doing than I did :)
- Organising to double the pit space during design (and returning the favour to Canterbury in turn)

While their were plenty of opportunities for teams to take advantage of these sorts of strategic advantages, Monash were probably the only team in the paddock organised enough to cover all bases. I have no doubt that they will respond very strongly to the major rule changes in effect next year. While I heard a number of complaints as to how Monash conduct themselves, it is not up to them to lay down and give up advantages they have gained by applying strong innovative project management principles.

While SAE might wax lyrical about this being an engineering competition and not a racing event it is the team that plays the racing game the best that ends up winning the competition. I don't have too much of an issue with it. The engineers that can best figure out to win a motorsport event are likely to be great engineers at figuring out how to build supersonic airliners, or bullet trains. It a capitalist society engineering is an inherently competitive field.

I will take you up on your offer to talk aero offline. It is not a personal area of strength, nor one well covered by faculty at ECU. The students have done their best in the last couple of years, but often the difference is in knowing what you don't know.

Cheers,

Kev

Okay I don't want to start a shit fight but I think that there is a little bit of historic selective memory. One of my first impressions of FSAE-A in 2004 was the professionalism of 3 teams in particular, UWA, RMIT and the Gong, which were the teams to beat at the time, and (what seemed to us and others) the organizers bias toward these teams over the next few years. I remember seeing our cars lined up with the start line of acc, then seeing UWA team members roll there car back a metre to "clean the tires" and then allowed to start from there. Or being allowed to scrut on wets or do skid pan on them. There will always a degree of tall poppy syndrome and closer scrutiny of the top team(s) of the time whether it is fair or not is.

The UWA suspension of the time was was a great innovative design but like Monash's big wings after a few years could it still be called innovative and did it deserve to win design? I'm sure that your understanding of the system had improved and were able to better present it to the judges. In 2005 we showed up with what we thought was a pretty innovative design, VARTM monocoque, tilted engine, supercharger, wings, brakes callipers integrated into uprights - we bombed in design because the car was incomplete and was had no idea if any of it even worked so couldn't present our design. Afterwards I jumped on these very forums and blasted the judges for not giving us better marks, now I realize that engineering design is the sum of the parts and more importantly it must work.

We made our jump from middle of the pack to design finals on the back of better preparation through the year. We would have almost monthly design reviews with the facility and other team members where we would practice our presentations. Now the alumni also takes part in design reviews, in fact tomorrow we are having a mini design review and sense check on their plans for next year.

There are two approaches to the comp, go to win or try some new stuff. Although not entirely independent they take different approaches, resources and skills of the team and the learning outcomes will be different. It's up to each team to make the call as to the approach they want to take. I've always liked a 2 year approach to the comp as it gives the better chance of achieving both.

Design will always be subjective. I, for one, can not stand a large number of products on the market however they are selling well as others love the design. By having just the one set of judges FSAE-A has kinda addressed this by removing inconsistency but there will still be a degree of bias in what the judges want to see. If I were to judge composites in design I would be more interested in the physical construction of the composite parts rather than FEA results, so if a team put up their FEA jockey and not a guy who was hands on I would be less impressed. Until there are a set of judges that travel the world judging comps and giving advice there will be this debate.

Thanks everyone for the engaging discussion. Ours may be a small comp, but we are certainly concept-rich on track (so many different vehicle types!), and opinion rich on these forum boards. And yet for the most part we can engage openly and honestly without too much aggro or preciousness. It always makes for some healthy cogitation leading up to Christmas, and once again my Christmas shopping is way behind schedule as a result.

Cheers all,

Gday Brent, only saw your post after I had sent mine off. I'm living out in the bush these days mate, the internet is delivered by horse out here and it takes some time to assemble the box of pixels they send out when I hit the "refresh" smoke signal.

I think the solution to the Design Event problem is simply to get more FSAE savvy people in the Design judging team. We are having some quite high level discussions here about education and intent of the event, etc. I observed the final Design discussions last Friday night, and maybe GTS and one or two others aside, the judging team were industry volunteers who are not quite as up-to-speed with this competition as we are. Now I understand the dangers of becoming completely introspective and self-obsessed if we were to close ourselves off to outside opinion, and we need industry input. But we also need educationalist input, and we need MORE ALUMNI input.

Judging us lot is a tough gig. We have some pretty strong opinions, and we have some pretty motivated high achievers amongst us. We need more of us stepping up into the judging roles...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kevin Hayward

GTS,

My comments were not a complaint, merely an observation. Monash won the event clearly. The gap in aerodynamics is real and acknowledged. It is a strength area for Monash. ECU has other areas that they out-design Monash, and as you state the finish was close. It would be hard to argue that Aero isn't the most important area for speed since the development of the 'big aero' rules. I would still hold that Monash must have out-presented the rest of the field to take the win. The car was very close to the 2013 car, and I would probably pick a couple of cars that were better designed overall (It is still clearly a very good vehicle). So as I see it the car was in the top three cars there, judges having no definitive measure of what was changed and what wasn't, with the strongest design presentation in the field. Am I missing anything?

---

Oh, I'd suggest Monash won it by the skin of their teeth, seriously. It really was very close.

I don't doubt there's some placebo effect in it at times; some organisers asked if we needed to rescale to create more of gap between Monash and the next, and most judges were pretty adamant about not rescaling as they felt the end result was accurate - ECU really did deserve to nearly take it.

Obviously I only judged aero - which the Monash team presented excellently on (a very significant upgrade from last year) - a few judges left Monash suggesting they were expecting a deeper degree of understanding.

They do a bit of stuff differently: presenting team members wore a shirt, were ready, present, and were engaging. They still got nerves! (In my area at least) but it seemed there were many checkpoints in the student's minds as to 'take this seriously; make an effort to be ready'. Which was a good and industry-relevant thing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kevin Hayward

I agree that a few innovate parts do not constitute an innovative car. I also agree about resource allocation. To make big changes to the platform some details need to be relegated to the quick and dirty design team to be improved on in iteration 2. The other side of the coin are those focusing on detail design at the expense of platform integration or innovation.

---

This is true. Just spitballin' however if we made an attempt in rules to judge differences, then we can decouple the resource allocation to push innovation from sapping resources at the expense of points, to something university's could manage independently. An R&D team in addition to a FSAE team or similar. Whilst there's a tradeoff, super large teams moving the design forwards incrementally are not fair to small teams trying for significant differences. For this reason alone I think scaling back design to the FSG limit (150 from 200) is dangerous. With multiple years to get a basic design right, the probabilities of completing all design events are significantly higher. Not the intent of the rules.

Simply awarding the "Icarus Award for Innovation" won't cover it.

So I'm still very much for judging what's changed firmly. Would it alienate teams that run it as a 'race team experience'? Who knows. Tokyo Denki I think has been running a similar car since 2004 or so. I could be wrong.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kevin Hayward

I also want to clearly state that I believe Monash are quite an innovative team. Aero aside, the true innovation for Monash is not in design...

---

The aero concept they have is very well developed, though Ill be honest (and I hope the many copycat teams are reading this) there are some things with the approach that are either fundamentally flawed, or could be done a lot better. Is it the best version of the "Monash Concept" yet? Yes, without question, and there is a ton that can be taken to other teams by way of process, learnings, etc.

There are ways of innovating beyond the "Monash Concept" however. That it's one of the first and best should not limit anyone from trying. I'd love to see a team rock up next year with a detailed appraisal of the concept, a considered approach to why different could be better, and an attempt at implementation. Ironically this logic would look very similar to Monash's initial justification for a foray into wings.

Not doubting it'd be hard work, however.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kevin Hayward

...but in project management. Their cars have quite conservative changes year to year with some ideas having very old roots, but with good justification. They have developed the vehicle to a point where it is impressively quick and regularly out-performs cars that on the face of it seem better. During the Oz comp they showed how well they cover all aspects of the competition. A couple of items I noticed (not a complete list)...

---

All very true points and all completely realisable by other teams - it's all free.

Some teams sadly didn't even have a faculty advisor present, by comparison.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kevin Hayward

I have no doubt that they will respond very strongly to the major rule changes in effect next year. While I heard a number of complaints as to how Monash conduct themselves, it is not up to them to lay down and give up advantages they have gained by applying strong innovative project management principles.

---

True, however some of the complaints were directed towards items very clearly spelled out in rules, by competing teams agree to the rules, yada yada...

But no complaints on the general professionalism. It really is stuff accessible to any team, and more importantly than that - it's stuff that breeds a competitive culture relative to the competition aims, which is great.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kevin Hayward

While SAE might wax lyrical about this being an engineering competition and not a racing event it is the team that plays the racing game the best that ends up winning the competition. I don't have too much of an issue with it. The engineers that can best figure out to win a motorsport event are likely to be great engineers at figuring out how to build supersonic airliners, or bullet trains. It a capitalist society engineering is an inherently competitive field.

---

Well... IMHO true motorsports runs quite differently but there are certainly lessons to take everywhere. Unmanaged and unmitigated teams usually have a Lord of the Flies moment 66% of the way in and tend not to recover. This is true of FSAE and anything else. Above all else it's a team competition, and learning that the sum of a collective effort tends to exceed the sum of parts alone when done correctly... is an important lesson.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kevin Hayward

I will take you up on your offer to talk aero offline. It is not a personal area of strength, nor one well covered by faculty at ECU. The students have done their best in the last couple of years, but often the difference is in knowing what you don't know.

---

Anytime.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Moke

...I remember seeing our cars lined up with the start line of acc, then seeing UWA team members roll there car back a metre to "clean the tires" and then allowed to start from there. Or being allowed to scrut on wets or do skid pan on them. There will always a degree of tall poppy syndrome and closer scrutiny of the top team(s) of the time whether it is fair or not is.

---

This must stop.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Moke

...engineering design is the sum of the parts and more importantly it must work.

---

I think the design judges should wear this on a t-shirt throughout event :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Moke

We made our jump from middle of the pack to design finals on the back of better preparation through the year. We would have almost monthly design reviews with the facility and other team members where we would practice our presentations. Now the alumni also takes part in design reviews, in fact tomorrow we are having a mini design review and sense check on their plans for next year.

---

This is an excellent approach. I was a little surprised to find some teams still do it once near the end of the year, consult with a Gantt chart and realise that there's little time to do anything with the feedback. Or that faculty (at some universities) doesn't get involve to sense-check it all for learning value.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Moke

Design will always be subjective... If I were to judge composites in design I would be more interested in the physical construction of the composite parts rather than FEA results, so if a team put up their FEA jockey and not a guy who was hands on I would be less impressed. Until there are a set of judges that travel the world judging comps and giving advice there will be this debate.

---

Well... the point of having industry people is to provide a balanced point of view considering all that is salient to the relevant portion of industry from an engineering science perspective. A relevant example (and not to slight yours) would be a team that has a composite part that's a beautifully built execution of poor science in design - the build quality in such an instance is secondary.

There is a rubric to standardise as much, which is important, as getting to competition as a student and discovering your year of work is misaligned with the pr*ck judging it is not going to make for happy students, and over time is not going to make for a favourable learning experience.

Accordingly not studying what's judged as a student is not going to make for a happy student, however (a quote reiterated at some length over the weekend) we can't award style points as a straight trade for some RTFM.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Big Bird

Thanks everyone for the engaging discussion. Ours may be a small comp, but we are certainly concept-rich on track (so many different vehicle types!), and opinion rich on these forum boards. And yet for the most part we can engage openly and honestly without too much aggro or preciousness.

---

Yes, Australasians are awesome :D

Moke,

Not selective memory at all. I wasn't at the 2005 comp (one of the handful I missed). While I think the design event in 2004 didn't reward innovation (UWA and RMIT) they certainly did get recognition in following comps. I am also fairly sure that somewhere along the line Auckland got a rough deal, but I wasn't commenting on the years (and cars) that I missed.

Geoff and I had a bit of a discussion about this. The main question was:

Assuming that refinement usually follows an innovative year, should a team get the design credit in the year of big innovation, or in the following refinement of the idea?

Both are difficult to do. For Australia I think we see the refinement rewarded rather than the original car.

I would also agree that once a team is established they get a better run through everything else. The teams (Woolongong, UWA, RMIT, Monash at different times) end up pushing the limits allowed and do gain an advantage. I don't like it, but I am reluctant to put any of the blame on the teams. In the end the practices are allowed by the event organisers, and by failure to punish you could make an argument that they are endorsed. Missing the years UWA won, I can stay on my high horse and claim that I have only been on the innocent side of these interactions. When I was a student we had plenty of stories as to how the top teams bent the rules to their favour, and maybe a couple of how we started to do the same to extract an advantage. By the way this sort of behaviour towards the 'favoured' teams is not restricted to the Australian competition.

It's not fair, but there is no such thing as a fair fight in life. At least it provides good material for a couple of rants over a few beers.

Kev

Geoff, the internet is the same here and I live in the largest city. They are busy rolling out high speed fibre to all the small hick towns forgetting where over a quarter of the population lives. I was going to add more about the volunteer situation but funnily enough had to go do some Christmas shopping.

GTS, tall poppy will always exist, it's why Ozzie's pick on us Kiwis - it's jealously. Top teams will always be seen to be unfairly advantaged, we have all heard rumours about the teams getting massive amounts of money. I think it is how that team carries itself that determines how other teams view them. From my dealings with them Monash have always been good guys, however I hear that the wins are starting to go to their heads. When all the members of a team have only ever won they'll start to get a bit of a complex.

Kev, I don't think we ever got the chance to talk as we were always head down in our cars, that and you were "The Kevin Haywood". I agree that it seems to be the refinement that does better than the innovation, but then there are plenty of examples where this is the case. Apple is often credited with making the first smartphones and tablets, however we all know that they refined the concepts. In my industry I see many millions of dollars of funding going to universities for concepts/innovation that never goes anywhere, however there is no money for refining these into mass production.

I think that the volunteers do the best that they can (and without them the comp would be right f'ed) but as you said Geoff, they often don't have a FSAE background or work in an area that is 100% relevant. Maybe non automotive industries need to be engaged, get backing from CAT or Boeing for example, we forget that it's not about cars rather engineering to make a car. If you value your FSAE experiences then you have a responsibility to give back a little and dig into your bag of tricks and help out. Try and get you employer/supplier/customer to sponsor the event or prize, tell them that it will mean more engineers like you rat her than that guy that got straight A's but is trying to weld steel to aluminium. See if someone from marketing wants to judge biz prez, get your boss/co-worker to be a design judge if (like me) you don't back your skills, yet, or just help putting cones back or sweeping the track.

Now that I'm done creating female versions of me (scary I know), I'm hoping to get the Team team support team team together again for comp next year (Moke TV commentary anyone?). If we can make the volunteering experience more enjoyable then I'm sure it will grow as a movement and mean that the comp grows. FSAE-A used to be seen as the cream of the crop, now it is FSG, lets get the crown back. They have a large industry backing which will be hard to beat but if we put alumni power to use we should be able to give it a good crack. I want my daughters to have the chance in 15 year to have a go at FSAE, of course they won't be allowed to date an engineer.

Oh... I'd offer a bit of perspective. It's just Formula SAE. Sure, it's significant, but the point of it is to move students beyond it in a significant rush and onto better things.

Who has more money, which German comp you went to, what rank on an unofficial international scale you occupy is... all beyond the point. They're valuable experiences, sure, but these are not what students should strive to take with them beyond their time here. Consider that there are quite a few universities that don't feature in the top 10 that really aren't quite worried about it... as their grads are ridiculously over-represented in high-level motorsports. There is no direct correlation.

Worrying about whether or not those judging have an FSAE background or not is a small thing to worry over. Some judges have auto industry, LM, F1, V8SC, etc backgrounds, many with international experience. If it came down to a binary choice, I'd take that over FSAE as their PoV's come from a place we should hope to get graduating students into quick smart. Thankfully we get both; the mix is pretty good. I can't stress it enough - we legitimately struggle on determining what's new work. Get this much sorted and the ability to judge the quality of what's actually done will take care of itself.

Engineering the competition for the sake of the competition etc... I'll be honest: I've actually interviewed grads from such programs for jobs... which they didn't get. Consistently. Most engineering employers want grads with ninjutsu levels of first principles knowledge, application skills and soft skills... not grads that can game a specific co-curricular program. If we treat FSAE as an institution we've missed the point. It is in fact a project space, and organisers and contributors should exist to guide students through it - where 'guide' means 'ensure you're getting the most learning value out of this'. That whole discussion about 'would you rather take the student with A+'s trying to weld aluminium to steel'... is a furphy. You'd rather take the student with a great GPA, with time management skills, with common sense, with project work experience. You can have it all and this is what the competition is supposed to be able to enable. Yes, it's hard, but so is life and you can have it all. Too much faculty (including one of the winning teams cited) relies on students that will give it all for FSAE. Stupid. Wrong. Not the point of uni. Not good for career. I've never worked for any employer that'd take the binary choice on 'fck the grades, I want the common sense' when frankly there are grads that present with the lot, and teaching someone what not to weld to what and why is a lot easier than running them through years 1-4 of a four year degree program they didn't really pay enough attention to. This in turn affects industry investment.

Same goes for treating is as a grinding mill for a given concept. Unless people are there to splice in a good dose of 'YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG, CONSIDER THIS', then it serves only to create crap grads. One team, for example, presented us last year with a compendium of >180 CFD runs. Which was long. Unfortunately there was a lot that was wrong/irrelevant/etc about it. When the appropriate emotions flared and a student said 'but I've been doing this for five years!' I contended with 'this looks more like one year five times over, with some key understanding gaps, sorry'. Yet this student had done all that had been asked of him - considerably more in fact - and was educated within the FSAE 'system'.

The role of having it all scrutinised by people quite far removed from it can't be understated.

Monash attitude? Some Monash guys presented themselves very professionally - warmly, wonderfully, humbly - this comp. There were some (and I stress a minority) fairly ugly displays of sportsmanship too, though it'd be unfair to single out Monash only here. Whilst it's the culmination of a significant co-curricular year's work for all - nerves are a little frayed and all look genuinely sleep-deprived on day - we had a number of teams presenting as though it was a complete joke, which is pretty sh*t too, especially considering what most volunteers have to go through to get a day off given the present climate of the local automotive industry. To them I'd suggest... drink in the better parts of that Monash attitude, and make it your own, pronto.

We do need to put noggins together and have a very hard think about what the competition is to mean in future. In five years it'll look very different with very little actual automotive engineering done by the three to-be-ex-manufacturers on the ground, and a practically depleted supplier base. The days of running the three manufacturer logos on the FSAE-A cars are numbered. I'd drop the direct comparisons with FSG and simply focus on what the competition needs to mean, and to whom. I'd think a reflection exercise with the SAE-A is in order sooner than later.

An example? I once worked for an electric vehicle manufacturer that put heads together and thought of a student project competition that'd create the kind of grads we really wanted. The end result was very different to FSAE.

And yes, plenty jealous of Kiwis - I'd happily move to Auckland, it's a great place.

Why The Design Event Will Never Encourage Innovation, and Should Only Be Worth 100 Points.
================================================== ==================

I am in complete agreement with Kevin in much of the above. (But too much above to pull quotes from...). ECU's car was the OUTSTANDING one at this comp, and deserved to be clear winner in Design. I am still getting my head around its CG-height. That number alone was enough to win it Design! (Subtly more on this below...)

Unfortunately, the ECU car is probably too good. It is an exceptionally NEAT AND TIDY design. But IMO most DJs interpret this as SIMPLE AND BORING. It is a sad fact of life that most H. Sapiens equate "innovation" with "complication". And DJs are simply an average selection of H. Sapiens.

I also agree with Kevin that the current approach to Design Event is really about presentation. Since there is already another event for that, clearly spelt out with a capital "P", it should not be scored twice. I pity the poor student genius who can pop out sublime designs, but unfortunately has difficulty expressing himself in words, and has a bit of BO, a hint of halitosis, and a touch of Tourette's. Sorry son, but bottom of the ladder for you!

Yes, the ability to sweet-talk the DJs may be useful in future careers, but that is only because not much seriously good engineering gets done these days (ie. because too much food! :)).
~~~~~o0o~~~~~

To find out if the Design Event can really reward "innovation", perhaps we can try a test case to see how consistent the DJs "innovation marks" might be.

GTS, I hope you can offer your opinion here. (And thanks for simply being here!)

And can any other DJs reading this please also make comments? Even non-Oz DJs, such as Pat or Claude?

A Test Case: Consider F:R MASS DISTRIBUTION, specifically R%.
===========================================
(Yes, I am flogging this, but...)

I would guess that 99+% of all FS/FSAE cars ever built have had R% = 45 - 55%. Similarly, the vast majority of current spec-series Formula cars, from FF to F1, are also in this range.

But (!), there have also been many RWD racecars built over the years, and many that are being built now, that have considerably higher R%. These cars typically race in more liberal series, typically those without spec tyres, etc. So, with Rules like FSAE.

So, BIG QUESTION - If an FSAE car turned up at competition with 65%R, then would it deserve extra Design Event points for "innovation"?

A team moving to such a design would require some deep-thinking big-picture analysis. The car itself would require considerable redesign of many major parts. But other than having a shorter nose, and a somewhat rearward MRH, it would not look much different to all the other cars. The DJs might not even recognise that this unique R% has any significance. Maybe not even after the students repeatedly explain why this is so.

In fact, the DJs might just see in front of them an incredibly boring "brown-go-kart".

So, IS 65%R INNOVATIVE, OR NOT???
~~~~~o0o~~~~~

BTW 1.

Quote:

---

Simply awarding the "Icarus Award for Innovation" won't cover it.

---

As I recall, young Icarus cocked it up badly. Exuberance of youth and all...

His old-man Daedalus got it right, though... :)
~~~~~o0o~~~~~

BTW 2.

Kevin, This 2005 post hints at where I think your biggest gains can be found (the hints are emboldened). You have a potential world-beater.
~~~~~o0o~~~~~~

BTW 3.

Xmas shopping??? Aaaaaarrrggghhh!!!!!

Z