2014 FSAE-Australasia

[GTS]

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.)

[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?

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

[Moke]

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.

[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. 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,

[Big Bird]

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...

[GTS]

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.

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.

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.

...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.

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.

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.

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.

...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.

...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

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.

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.

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

[Kevin Hayward]

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

[Moke]

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.

[GTS]

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.

[Z]

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

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