Course Design Feedback & Discussion - FSAE Lincoln

[Z]

The following taken from a 2013 version of the Rules, but I remember similar at least as far back as ~2000.

D7.2 Autocross Course Specifications & Speeds
D7.2.1 The following standard specifications will suggest the maximum speeds that will be encountered on the course. Average speeds should be 40 km/hr (25 mph) to 48 km/hr (30 mph).
...
* Straights: No longer than 60 m (200 feet) with hairpins at both ends (or) no longer than 45 m (150 feet) with wide turns on the ends.
* Constant Turns: 23 m (75 feet) to 45 m (148 feet) diameter.
* Hairpin Turns: Minimum of 9 m (29.5 feet) outside diameter (of the turn).
* Slaloms: Cones in a straight line with 7.62 m (25 feet) to 12.19 m (40 feet) spacing.
* Miscellaneous: Chicanes, multiple turns, decreasing radius turns, etc. The minimum track width will be 3.5 m (11.5 feet).
...

D8.6.2 The standard specifications for the FSAE Endurance Course are:
* Straights: No longer than 77.0 m (252.6 feet) with hairpins at both ends (or) no longer than 61.0 m (200.1 feet) with wide turns on the ends. There will be passing zones at several locations.
* Constant Turns: 30.0 m (98.4 feet) to 54.0 m (177.2 feet) diameter.
* Hairpin Turns: Minimum of 9.0 m (29.5 feet) outside diameter (of the turn).
* Slaloms: Cones in a straight line with 9.0 m (29.5 feet) to 15.0 m (49.2 feet) spacing.
* Miscellaneous: Chicanes, multiple turns, decreasing radius turns, etc. The standard minimum track width is 4.5 m (14.76 feet).
... etc....

(My emboldening.)

Part of what originally attracted me to FSAE is this focus on "agility" of the cars (in the Rules at least!). A bit like going to the circus to watch the acrobats, rather than watching a running race like a marathon (yaaaawwnn, ... except for when they start collapsing at the end...) .
~~~~~~~~~~o0o~~~~~~~~~~

Originally posted by Claude:
I wish there could be 3 or even [more] hairpins really 180 degrees in a row. It is low speed for sure but I guarantee you that it is spectacular. You will see the cones flying. You will see the good drivers and the good cars and the bad car driver wishing for a handbrake!

(My emphasis again.)

Claude,

YAHOOOO!!!!! I knew there would be something WE AGREE ON.

I am 1,000% with you on this one! And also the "more bumps in the higher speed corners...".
~~~~~~~~~~o0o~~~~~~~~~~

Raitinger,

The Hough loader (rhymes with "rough and tough") that I used to own was a bit bigger than the CAT you linked to, and I recall it having a tighter turning circle (the two inner wheels almost touched).

I have a "World Cars Catalogue" from the 1960s that has a page of specs on each of the models built that year (I picked it up for ~$1 at a school fete). I flicked through it last night and there are many cars there with turning circles less than 10 metres "between WALLS" (so this includes the nose overhang).

My old Pug 404, with a wheelbase of 2.65 m (104", so medium/full-size passenger car), from that era is listed with turning circle of ~9.6 m (between walls). It had very conventional front-strut-suspension and R&P steering. Interestingly, many similar sized cars have much larger turning circles, some up around 12 m. The main difference between these cars is the quality of their detail design. The Peugeots where very conventional designs, but very well executed.

FSAE is supposed to an "educational" exercise. Yet I see many VERY BADLY designed steering systems on these cars. A little probing reveals that "the steering was done by some guy N? years ago..., and so far it works sorta OK, so we keep using it". In other words, none of these students have learnt, or will learn (?), how to design a good steering system. And when they go into the passenger car world, the attitude is "Well, the customer should practice their three-point turns...". Not a good attitude, IMO.

And, BTW, the biggest advantage of an exceptionally tight turning circle? Watching your passenger's face as you rather suddenly do a U-turn in a narrow alley!

Anyway, here (hopefully) is some ascii-art of a hairpin that would benefit the well-designed cars (eg. simple, low-powered, non-aero cars, with attention-to-detail-steering), and would penalise the cars with bad steering geometry, or perhaps with a long-overhang, wide front-wing.

.. = used as spacers,
o = cones,
8 = haybales or water-barriers down middle.

xxx = path of car with "good" tight steering.
============================
......o...o..o..o...o......
..o.......................o..
..o.......................o..
..o.......................o..
..o.........x..x.........o..
..o.....x....8....x.....o..
......ox.....8.....xo......
......ox.....8.....xo......
......o.x....8....x.o......
......o.x....8....x.o......
.......|<--9m-->|.......


xxx = path of car with "bad" steering.
===========================
....|<---15+m--->|....
......o...o..o..o...o......
..o.......x..x..x.......o..
..o..x................x..o..
..ox....................xo..
..ox....................xo..
..o..x.......8.......x..o..
......o.x....8....x.o......
......o..x...8...x..o......
......o...x..8..x...o......
......o...x..8..x...o......
......o..x...8...x..o......
Note extra distance covered here. Maybe +1 sec, at least?. Or they can knock over cones...


For safety the Enduro should have a slow entry to a short hairpin-entry-straight, and the safety barrier down the middle. The AutoX can have the hairpin(s) at the end of a long straight, and no centre barrier, because only one car on track at a time.

Z

[JulianH]

Julian H

"....the problem with "3 hairpins in a row" is mostly that the drivers are not able to position their car after the first or the second corner to be completely on the outside to use the 9m OD."

That is their problem! Come on, you are no complaining that your car cannot take 3 consecutive sharp hairpins?

"...but it is quite a risk to build them in such a way that it forces Off-tracks."

Again that is the team problem. And of track at such low speed represent minimal risk

"In Italy we had several Black Flags and therefore retirements from Endurance because the cars couldn't do 3 hairpins in a row"

Again that is the team problem. The teams (car + driver) adapt to the track, not the other way around.

That being said, and to be clear I also want to see some fast corners, (bumpy ideally) but taking 3 consecutives hairpins should be a minimum requirement.

2 years ago Lola came to the ALMS Long Beach Grand Prix with 2 LMP2 cars which were not able to negotiate the last hairpin for a lack of steering angle. See... it happens to the professionals.... I hope FSAE/FS teams can spare themselves a similar embarrassment.

Claude,

well we weren't complaining too much, I think our car was among the fastest through that section . With a short wheelbase and 4WD Torque Vectoring, it's not such a big challenge, yes.
But there were teams from Italy that only participated in FSAE Italy and got black flagged in their only Endurance event of a year because of that issue.
I mean, yes of course, that is their problem, they had an error in their car design, but I think this is not a reason why you should "lose a year of work".

We had a similar issue in Austria 2011 where our car was only able to power-slide around a hairpin. We lost a lot of time every lap, we learned our lesson and did it better in the next years. I think this is more the way to go in an education process like FSAE.

Z's idea with a turn that hurts bad cars but does not force them to retire is a good compromise in my opinion.

[whiltebeitel]

Raitinger,

"..This is the direction we were moving to at the bottom left of endurance."

Pale tentative. 33 ft is not tight enough

I wish there could be 3 or even hairpins really 180 degrees in a row. It is low speed for sure but I guarantee you that it is spectacular. You will see the cones flying. You will see the good drivers and the good cars and the bad car driver wishing for a handbrake!

Claude and/or Z,

How do you consolidate the push for teams with good drivers with the idea of FSAE as an engineering showcase?

3 tight 180* turns take only one misjudgment by a driver on entry to put the car in a bad position. A car that can make a 25 ft. turn would not be able to drive around the subsequent hairpins if it slid a foot or two too far wide on the exit of the first turn. This is not lessened by making the straights very short.

This is the same comment with decreasing radius turns and decreasing radius slaloms. In autocrossing, a good driver that is mentally prepared, and can look 2-3 moves ahead will destroy a lesser driver in these maneuvers The loss of momentum and trying to mentally "catch up" is tough to recover. I'd venture to say, it is more taxing than when making a similar misjudgment on a road course.

Also, I want to bring up a safety concern. While something that pushes the "lesser" teams to hit cones or try to skid around a turn to make it may seem spectacular or entertaining, this poses problems for the corner workers, timing, and start line workers. Every time a cone gets tossed, someone has to run and replace it between cars. This naturally puts a warm body close to the racing line on a hot track. If multiple cones and/or a stalled/spun car is added to the mix, suddenly you have to yellow/red flag cars who aren't very experienced at recognizing or paying attention to flags. This significantly increases the probability of an incident.

To take the example of a yellow flag incident to the logistical side, then you have to give more re-runs, and that's a PITA with all the extra factors surrounding cars entering and leaving the AX event on that day.

Do you think the juice is worth the squeeze? Should the track be more technical to disproportionately benefit better drivers, increase the risk, and potentially complicate the logistics just to see a more exciting race and maybe see a slight difference in car setup between a hand full of cars?

Raitinger,

You guys have an awesome course, and I've been impressed by how Lincoln tracks have been set up since the first even in '12. Our team used the course map to realize how many points we were throwing away in AX and Endurance by going no aero in '12. The course maps were plenty good for building lap sims around the older tracks. We used these to make design decisions around August of the year before the competition. Thus the change from a narrow track, no aero car in '12, to a winged, wide track car in '13.

[Claude Rouelle]

Julian H,

So you want an easy circuit for the first year teams and a more difficult one for the more experienced teams? If you go this way you also want tech rules different for new and more experienced teams?

The rules are the same of everybody

FSAE is to prepare you for real engineering life. When you will go for a job interview the rules and the hiring criteria are not going to be different if you are 22 or 26 years old, German, Italian, Indian or Brazilian (I would hate to think they would be different)

Whiltebeitel

If there is a safety issue, the cones will only be placed back when it is safe to do so. As in any corners in any competition.

"...How do you consolidate the push for teams with good drivers with the idea of FSAE as an engineering showcase?"

What if in real life you have good product but a bad marketing or a bad sales force? Or the other way around?

Every competition in the world will have winners which are the best combination between people and machine. FSAE and FS competition are not different

Come on guys..... Stop whining and make sure you can drive a car in successive hairpins of 9 M OD. That is it.

Now that being said The Lincoln circuit is very good and challenging. And no matter what I will have fun watching the cars. In ANY corners. But we are all in pursuit of excellence and it can even be more challenging

Claude

[JulianH]

Claude,

I don't know why you are so obsessed about this and come up with strange comparisons... Of course I don't want different courses for different teams...

I will stand by my position, that it is a bad move to make tracks that DQ teams on purpose even if they are "within the rules". There is not only an "intend of rules" for teams while designing parts on the car, there is also an "intend of the rules" for organizers when they design a track. And in my opinion, this intend is to have a challenging track but not a track that is dangerous or reason for mutiple DQs.

I know that you will answer with "if the teams designed their cars properly they should have no problem with that". Yes, I know. But there are also still dozens of teams using rod ends in bending or what ever crazy parts I still see at events that are just have to fail at one point or another.

FSAE is education and in my opinion education shouldn't be that cruel that one single mistake is going to cost you a whole year. That's it.

[tromoly]

Raitinger, the layouts look like a lot of fun, honestly I'm a little jealous that I won't have an opportunity to be there driving, very nice work.

[raitinger]

Let's make an analogy.

Let's look at FSAE & FS as just another educational class like all the other ones we take at university. Most of the time we will get a course outline at the very beginning of class giving us all the subjects that will be covered and potentially be responsible for knowing when it comes to the final. You could say that the outline is much like the SAE rules. As you go through your class, you will learn the subjects from the syllabus spending extra time and emphasis on the subjects which are most important. Again, in FSAE the majority of our time is spent designing a car the will fit together, start, move, turn, stop, and not break. As a secondary, time is spent making the cars do these things well enough to garner fast competition event times.

At the end of most classes there will be a final test, for FSAE it's the competitions. Occasionally, there is a final evaluation which contains some form of curve ball. For those not familiar with the baseball term, it is more or less a problem that is very unexpected. The are few reasons that a specific problem is perceived as a curve ball.

1) Your professor is asking you about the information in a different way to see if you truly have a grasp of the subject.
2) You are asked to combine subject concepts in a way that you haven't been asked to do before, but is likely the next logical step in understanding the subject.
3) You feel the subject you are being questioned on was not emphasized throughout the class, and feel it is somewhat unfair to be placed with a large amount of weight on a final. Your professor may reply that the curve ball question was covered in the syllabus or study guide maybe, and therefore is fair game.

I think the difference between Claude & Z and others would be where they place this curve ball of the 9m OD turn, or series of turns. I think Claude & Z place this curve ball somewhere at 1) or 2), while many others feel that it is more of a 3). It has been my experience that the professors who like to throw the curves are the ones who are very knowledgeable, passionate, and focused regarding their field, in the same respect they may be less apt to keep the big picture in sight. In their mind the curve ball is the tool used to see if you can put the cherry on top of your understanding of the subject, some even go so far as to say that they are helping you proceed to the next step in you understanding of the subject. The reality though, is that the curve ball turns into more of a pass/fail type evaluation, as opposed to a distributed grading A,B,C,D, F. You either can solve the problem on the spot or you cannot.

Tech inspection aside, the FSAE individual dynamic events are structured in such a way that as long as you complete the event and keep it between the cones, you will receive points. How many points is determined by how fast you complete the event. In essence I think this what most people see as the "Spirit of the Competition", and I think most see the 9m OD turn and certainly the series of turns as a break from that "Spirit". That type of evaluation is better suited for a maneuverability event similar to SAE Baja.

So, sure the 9m OD turn is fair game to put in the event because it is in the rules, but that doesn't mean the students won't think whoever did it is kind of an A-hole.

[whiltebeitel]

Whiltebeitel

If there is a safety issue, the cones will only be placed back when it is safe to do so. As in any corners in any competition.

"...How do you consolidate the push for teams with good drivers with the idea of FSAE as an engineering showcase?"

What if in real life you have good product but a bad marketing or a bad sales force? Or the other way around?

Every competition in the world will have winners which are the best combination between people and machine. FSAE and FS competition are not different

Come on guys..... Stop whining and make sure you can drive a car in successive hairpins of 9 M OD. That is it.

Now that being said The Lincoln circuit is very good and challenging. And no matter what I will have fun watching the cars. In ANY corners. But we are all in pursuit of excellence and it can even be more challenging

Claude

Claude,

I think you're missing the point. There is a balance between technical design, marketing, setup, and driver skill to name a few. All of these play a very important role in a successful FSAE team. I'm not discounting that in any way. I am simply asking you to elaborate on what factors you are trying to emphasize in these completions. This changes what dictates the ideal combination, and thus what "excellence" looks like.

Your recommendations to the course would increase the influence of drivers, relative to the technical design of the car. Do you think this is the way the competitions should go? Should more emphasis be put on maximum steering angle and driver expertise, or are the competitions a good balance of priorities as they currently exist, in your opinion?

If the 9 m OD is so important, why not just reduce the size of the skidpad course to 9 m? Would that not adequately address the issue?

[Z]

... the FSAE individual dynamic events are structured in such a way that as long as you complete the event and keep it between the cones, you will receive points. How many points is determined by how fast you complete the event. In essence I think this what most people see as the "Spirit of the Competition", and I think most see the 9m OD turn and certainly the series of turns as a break from that "Spirit". That type of evaluation is better suited for a maneuverability event similar to SAE Baja.

So, sure the 9m OD turn is fair game to put in the event because it is in the rules, but that doesn't mean the students won't think whoever did it is kind of an A-hole.

Raitinger (and others),

The above quote, and similar by others, are deeply disappointing. They leave me somewhat speechless...

Those comments are compelling evidence that FSAE is becoming less and less about "educating young engineers", and more and more about "let's pretend we're all in a Mini-F1 comp! Yeah..., yeeehahh!... we're all REAL RACERS!"

The "9 metre minimum diameter hairpin" has been in the Rules forever. Yet the insatiable urge to pretend that "We're in a real racing series..." means that in practice the tightest turns nowadays are the Skid-Pad. The students have been smart enough to see this, so over the years they have also been lazy enough to only design their steering for such larger radius corners. Very little "educating" happening there.

As I have pointed out (maybe too many times now), a 9 m OD turn is a doddle for a car with ~1.5 m wheelbase. In fact, 7 m OD is trivial, and is what I have put in all my sketches. It is only incredibly INCOMPETENT engineers who could not do this, or else lazy students who know they don't have to. So tell the students at the beginning of the year that there WILL BE a proper hairpin at their end of year comp. If their car fails to negotiate said hairpin, then mark them down as being really STUPID! Geez, do you really want incompetent young engineers like that designing your next car (or Jumbo Jet!)?

And as for the "...only the best drivers could get around a 9 m hairpin" argument! Grooaaann, mumble, BULLDUST!!! [Under breath - How can anyone be so STUPID!] In a ~1.5 m wheelbase car with TYPICAL passenger-car steer-angles, my dear old grandmother could do it! (Err, well, perhaps not fair, because you've all seen the movies, and you know what we vampires can do...) But geez..., you turn the wheel left, you turn the wheel right. And as should be obvious, all this happens at LOW SPEED, so NO QUICK THINKING required!

Hmmm, since I seem to have got my voice back...

This issue of "Let's only PRETEND we're educating the students wrt steering-geometry" is in the same league as "Let's PRETEND that the students have to design a 'fully operational suspension with 2 inches of travel', but let's never give them any reason, whatsoever, to actually use such a suspension!". The earliest events in the parking lot in MiddleSomeWhereUSA(?) had some little cracks and waves, etc., in the pavement. Not really what I would call bumps-worthy-of-a-good-suspension, but that doesn't matter, because such tracks are quickly being ironed-out. "Whoaa..! They don't hold F1 races on crappy parking lots like that!"

Ahh, yes, peer group pressure. We must all copy the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous". Education be damned! Leave that to the nerds...

Z

[Z]

Here is updated version of ascii-hairpins.
~~~o0o~~~

.. = used as spacers,
o = cones,
8 = haybales or water-barriers down middle.

xxx = path of current cars with typically"bad" steering.
======================================
....|<---15+m--->|....
......o...o..o..o...o......
..o.......x..x..x.......o..
..o..x................x..o..
..ox....................xo..
..ox....................xo..
..o..x.......8.......x..o..
......o.x....8....x.o......
......o..x...8...x..o......
......o...x..8..x...o......
......o...x..8..x...o......
......o..x...8...x..o......
If 15+ metre wide turning-area is not enough for the poor little dears, then increase the top section to a whole football field...


xxx = path of car with just acceptable steering, as per Rules.
==========================================
......o...o..o..o...o......
..o.......................o..
..o.......................o..
..o.......................o..
..o.........x..x.........o..
..o.....x....8....x.....o..
......ox.....8.....xo......
......ox.....8.....xo......
......o.x....8....x.o......
......o.x....8....x.o......
.......|<--9m-->|.......


xxx = path of car with good steering (designed by dim-witted baboon),
and driven by frail, 80 year old, grandmother (note sensible driving line).
================================================== =
......o...o..o..o...o......
..o.......................o..
..o.......................o..
..o.......................o..
..o.........x..x.........o..
..o......x...8...x......o..
......o..x...8...x..o......
......o..x...8...x..o......
......o..x...8...x..o......
......o..x...8...x..o......
.........|<.7m.>|.........

Z