15 replies to this topic

[Ben]

Hello All,

Just a quick message to say that Formula Student starts today, with static events on friday and dynamics on thw weekend. The whole event's at Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground, near Lutterworth in central England. Over 60 cars are entered and the competition should be very close.

We finally got our delayed car running on Tuesday and some video has been posted on our site:

http://ubracing.mark...tion=viewLatest

Entry to competition is free and well worth it in my (admittedly biased) opinion.

Ben

[desmo]

Best of luck, Ben! Keep us posted.

[Ben]

Updates should be posted daily on www.ubracing.co.uk

Good luck to any other competitors on this board.

Ben

[dancin stu]

We had pretty much the weekend from hell, a massive case of what if, will post more, including pics of the car tommorrow.

Congratulations to RMIT, winning sprint and enduro, thats a very quyick racecar you have there, shame I didnt have the chance to look over it more

[Ben]

Our results were:

6th Acceleration (damp track)
8th Autocross (damp track)
17th Skidpad (damp and oil spillage on track)

1st Cost
6th Presentation
15th Design

DNF in endurance and fuel economy

We found out we got 13th overall. Results have been posted on www.dutracing.nl

A great event overall. For those who want variety in motorsport the winning car (RMIT) was a single cylinder spaceframe car with 10 inch wheels. We ran a Yamaha R6 with a spaceframe on 13 inch wheels. Monash ran a spaceframe, Honda CBR600, and 13s (massive wings as well BTW, which were mounted unsprung). Design was won by ETS with a carbon tub, R6 on 13s.

Other engines in evidence were Triumph and Suzuki 4 cylinders, a Ducati V-twin. Semi-auto boxes, CVTs a cockpit adjustable diff from Stu's UH Racing team. Hydraulic 4WD, conventional 4WD, active suspension, bluetooth enable PDAs in the steering wheel to activate the semi-auto (Lulea).

In fact, all the cool technology and variation across the field that many users of this board would love to see return to motorsport. Any of you want to set up a series?

Ben

[Keith Young]

What exactly are you proposing Ben? Im already interested.

[Ben]

Originally posted by rough_wood
What exactly are you proposing Ben? Im already interested.

I was simply suggesting that it would be nice to have a chance to run these cars more than three times a year.

In the USA, the SCCA has formed a class at the Solo II nationals specifically for Formula SAE cars. University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) won the class last year. Many teams such as Cal Poly Pomona and Toronto already run their own events as fundraisers for their respective teams.

Over in the UK we have nothing, and we can't race in MSA sanctioned sprint events because we have the driver's feet in front of the axle line.

To run a Solo II / FSAE autocross event you need a large area of hardstanding, a few hundred cones, and a timing circuit.

Ben

[Lukin]

That rule about the drivers feet and the front axle is a bit of a bitch. If you could get it sanctioned, you could compete in high climbs, rally's etc.

[Ninja2b]

We (The Chalmers Team) also had the weekend from hell. I wasnt at uni for the week before the competition because I had to go home to graduate, but I was shocked with the state of the car when I turned up at the campsite on the thursday night! I think we should win an award for being the laughing stock of the competition.

Its a shame we couldnt get the car ready in time, I reckon our design was pretty good, and the car was pretty neat. We only managed to get a rolling chassis built though. Im pretty gutted because it was such a wasted opportunity.

Really liked a lot of the other cars though. The ETS car was amazing, but I was kind of happy to see it beat by a much simpler design, proving that all the fancy designs in the world dont amtter if a simpler car is faster. The RMIT car was a real nice, neat design. Luleå's electronics was amazing. Those Magnetorheto.... whatever dampers must have been a real pain to set up! And the packaging of their exhaust and turbo was great.

[dancin stu]

So then, our weekend, this a bit later than promised due to the joys of being back home and not being able to find a free internet trial.........

Well we always knew it was going to be tight leading up to the competition, we had decided to start with a complete blank sheet of paper due to the vast amount of stuff we managed to obtain free of charge whilst we were all on placement.

In the end we ended up finishing the car very early friday morning before blasting up the motorway to Brunty ready for our design review, which unfortunately we had at 8:45. Needless to say we did pretty well, the judges being overall impressed by our car, but we got panned for not having finished it, we just did not have anything to back up our theory, even the weight of the car and distribution was an unknown until scrutineering..........

The judges, although not telling us until sunday, thought our diff was excellent, for anyone who doesnt know, it is converted from a quad bike, and offers a full range of adjustment, being able to run fully open, or fully locked, and every single place in between through the use of a clutch pack on one of the output splines. No matter how good it was, this was the item that delayed the car most, we pretty much made half a differential, with the end result being quite heavy, hence our heavier than we would have liked car.

Scrutineering passed without too many headaches, minor bits and pieces which we had to have re evaluated, although this year we effectively scrutineered our cars in the workshop and had solutions for all of the major probelms we were likely to encounter, like our widget for the exhaust which dropped us below the noise limit without sacrificing power, well at least we were prepared for some things......!

Brake test proved intersting, due to my suspension geometry that promotes loads of scrub, 10mm track increase, much to Mr Stanfiorths amazement, and super soft Avon hillclimb tyres, we were generating heat in the tyres just driving round in cricles..... Front brakes proved easy to lock, rears not so, eventually traced to part of the differential that had moved. Easy fix was to run with a locked diff and ue only one rear brake.

Then the fun and games begun. We decided on an acceleration run to begin with, just to get a feel for the car. Si guns the throttle, lets out the clutch and fires off down the straight. However, due to me taking out all the rebound from the rear dampers to aid with traction, the rear sat down and stayed down, and when second gear was engaged, the shock broke the right rear pushrod. Si not realising what had happened kept his foot in, and slewed over to the left side of the course, hit a cone and took flight. When he came down, he did so hard on the left front which ripped the rocker insert clean out of the chassis.

initial thoughts were that it had ended, and we were gutted. After the intial misery we decided that we could fix it, and two phonecalls, one to a local F1 team and one to a welder sourced enough carbon, glue and metal to effect a solution. We ended up staying at Brunty till midnight, leaving just enough time for the glue to dry.

Sunday, and we were hopeful of a bit more luck.didnt end up getting the car to the enduro till the end of play. we were going great guns, after only 10 minutes running, we were putting in 57 second laps, 4 seconds a lap faster than anyone else on track, the team were all happy for once trying to salvage some personal pride out of the weekend, I was happy as larry to see the car handling, no testing time meant setup was derived from a handling package I had written myself, with the custom damper curves also proving excellent. Turn in was amazing, one drivver commenting he could go into a corner as fast as he wanted and the thing would just turn! That'll be the lack of KPI then.......

then after three laps, the chain snapped...... we were all gutted, but didnt want that to end our day so pleaded with the marshals for a bit more time.half an hour later we were back, and again going great guns, then on the final lap, Ben nailed it out of the last corner and the diff cage split, sending a spray of tripod and grease up in the air! Back at the pits, it didnt prove quite as bad as it looked, the car is ready to run again now.

All in all a bit of a miserable weekend, that just confirms theres no point in having an amazingly complex car when you dont finish till the day of the competition............

We were very pleased with the diff, and if Class 200 happens next year, we might see an active diff for the first time, watch this space! I'm pleased cos their using my suspension geometry for next years car,and asked me to stay in touch to consult on car setup, so I must have done something right!

Sorry if its a bit waffly, Trying to put so much drama into words tends to take up space

[dancin stu]

If you dont want to read the text, heres some pretty pictures







Cockpit diff adjustment:

[Ben]

Originally posted by dancin stu

I hope the wing was a joke :-P

Seriously this is what is required to get usable downforce on an FSAE car:

http://www-personal....ae/frameset.htm

Ben

[Powersteer]

What about constantly variable transmission, has it ever been used in SAE?

[dancin stu]

Originally posted by Ben


I hope the wing was a joke :-P

I know, its fantastic isn't it!;) They didnt let us run it anyway, certainly helps when people read the rulebook......... it failed on location - too far forward, and the leading edge radius was too sharp, hence the rule change for next year.

I have never been in favour of it particularly, didnt care much if it went on the car as it only weighed a kilo or so being made of blue foam, so won't affect the MOI too much, although I could see a few cones being taken out, oh and thats the narrow version......

A guy on our team did his dissertation on it, got help from Jordan too, fair enough it does give 10 kilos of downforce at 40mph, and the Jordan guy said the downforce would help, although my simulations seemed to suggest otherwise, but when I saw Monash were coming over just felt kind of embarressed, especially trying to explain that to the design judges

[dancin stu]

Originally posted by Powersteer
What about constantly variable transmission, has it ever been used in SAE?

Aston university ran it this year on their Class1-200 car. Certainly helped in the acceleration, I was told they got a 4.12, but their installation left a bit to be desired, being mounted above the differential, it all looked just a bit too high for my liking. Theyve obviously taken the decision to gowith it and work their car around the problems it brings. Given a couple of years development, I do think that it could eventually be very effective, better integration, (as far as I could see they were stillrunning the six speed gearbox too) and ligthening would certainly improve things. Just look at A-Mod cars in the states, they mostly all run CVTs although they are integrated with their engines, think theyare 2 stroke snowmobile engines if I am not mistaken, so their is definately potential.

Also, IIRC, think someone mentioned that the German team with the Mahle engine also had a CVT, can anyone confirm this?

[Patrice L'Rodent]

Just back home in Oz so I’ll post some notes before the jetlag gets me.
I was part of the senior ‘moderating’ team of Design judges at FS, along with Neill Anderson from TVR, Tony Southgate and Claude Rouelle.

In response to the question about CVTs, Aston University from Birmingham had a sheave type CVT on both their new car and their older ‘200’ series car. Oddly enough, this was in series with the standard six speed transmission supplied by Mr. Honda. The German RWTH Aachen car had a student designed, electronically controlled CVT using opposed conical elements with a ring that passed the torque. The ratio changed by the ring moving lengthways along the opposing cones. This was bolted to the back of a three cylinder Mahle engine, a prototype constructed for the competition. I saw this car in Pontiac in May, and it was in improved and better tested form in Leicester. The car was far too heavy to be competitive in FS and there was some question about the ability of the ‘ring’ to deliver the torque reliably.

Delft had a car running at 128kg, maybe a few more after the scrutineers insisted they improve driver lateral protection. The car ran well, and despite questionable handling, was fast. Weight saving had extended to a tiny battery which did not have enough grunt to restart the engine after the compulsory driver change.

Delft was one of three single cylinder cars in the top four of the design competition along with eventual overall winners RMIT from Melbourne and Tokyo Denki. This was not due to any particular bias by the judges, it just happened that way. Design winner was ETS from Montreal. Again, I saw this car in Pontiac where it was too new to be competitive, but it was running well at Bruntingthorpe. This delightful carbon composite car may have won design, however The judges thought it really was too big and too heavy. Had the US ‘500lb’ rule been in place this car may not have made the finals. As it was the ETS team suffered a couple of major failures that caused them to DNF some events including a backfire that blew their lovely variable geometry manifold to pieces.

RMIT came with a simple tube frame, single cylinder car with six months of development and good drivers. Light weight, good fuel consumption and exemplary handling had them easy winners in the finish, continuing the run of good performances by the Australian teams in FSAE over the last couple of years.

Interesting sidelights. The Faculty Advisor to Tokyo Denki is Dr. Sano who designed the 3 litre V12 Honda F1 engine in the 1960s. Tony Southgate designed the Lola chassis that made the engine competitive. A delightful reunion as they had not seen each other since those days.
The TD car (with Honda engine, of course) was running well until a collision with a hay bale in the endurance event forced a dnf)

Another engine guru, Geoff Goddard, was advising the Oxford Brooks team, and if their claims are to believed, their Triumph engines were putting out prodigious horsepower. Having Geoff on board, I guess one should expect that.

Many teams complained about unfair judging in the Design event. From a judge’s point of view, the compulsory 8 page design review is what tells the judges about your car. Three quarters of the teams had poor design reviews, so the judges did not have sufficient information. In the face to face judging, the teams have to defend their design decisions and prove they understand the reasoning behind them. Very few teams were able to confidently defend their design, even though the cars may have been very good.

I guess this is enough for the moment as a forum post. If anyone wants more information, just ask.

PDR