Formula SAE (student formula)

:lol: hilarious. The cars are meant to fit everyone from a 5th percentile female to a 95th percentile male as part of the rules, aren't they? (I should know this by now!). I wonder if anyone gets caught out by this by having pedal trays that don't move back far enough.
 
No one said they have to fit comfortably :p
 
i don't understand either...maybe it's to test if the car flips, the engine cuts out?
 
It?s mainly to make sure that the car has a low enough center of gravity, and that it doesn?t start leaking fluids at lateral Gs.
 
It?s mainly to make sure that the car has a low enough center of gravity, and that it doesn?t start leaking fluids at lateral Gs.

Exactly.
 
Pretty rough that they missed two dynamic events due to what looks to be a cockup by the organisers...would have been shitting myself if I was the one in the car!
 
For all who weren't at FSG: wet skid pat sucks when you have a light vehicle.
You could clearly see that all the very light cars struggled while heavier cars which wouldn't have drive a good time scored this time.

Hopefully they will change that bac to normal skid pad next year.
 
Does anyone know what shipping/ flying the FSAE car and tools to the US cost?
Has any team member here done this before?
We are currently discussing doig Michigan next year.
 
A small update if anyone's interested. As of now, we have yet to find one sponsor, the Uni hasn't really helped us one bit and it's quite sad actually. Yeah, we haven't given up yet but we're not far from it.
 
A small update if anyone's interested. As of now, we have yet to find one sponsor, the Uni hasn't really helped us one bit and it's quite sad actually. Yeah, we haven't given up yet but we're not far from it.

:blink:

Last years car which is displayed by the Mech.Eng. entrance at my uni is full of sponsors, even 'Williams Technology' (or whatever they're called)... :blink:


I asked about joining FS during my first week at uni and they told me it was mostly/usually for 3rd/4th year students, so I guess I'm gonna leave it for 2 years before I ask about joining. We hardly learn anything "new-new" during our first year anyway, so wouldn't be to much use.
 
Don't let that stop you, the team assistant leader this year is a year 2. He's super great at CAD and very hardworking. As long as you display willingness to contribute and learn, they'd more than appreciate it
 
FSAE-A is on this weekend! We've already had the first two days of the event.

I had to pull out of the team a few months ago due to illness, but have ended up volunteering for SAE-A doing admin stuff and have been there the last couple of days. Yesterday set up the admin tent and did shitloads of team registrations (boy that was fun) then just for a change helped with some tech inspections (which actually WAS fun! hoorah for being anal and failing teams for not having two threads sticking out of their suspension pickup points :twisted:). Today from 8am to 5pm I judged business presentations. Some were brilliant and would totally get my million bucks if I had one, some teams seemed to not have even read the presentation brief. Back there Sunday!
 
I'm curious to know how many teams in Australia use Aero kits? I know Monash does but I don't know the other teams.

I've seen that those Aero kits seem to increase performance drastically at least on Global Formula's car. In Hockenheim and Austria it looked liked as if they don't need to brake for cornering and that they keep their speed through the turns. I guess that was their key to success as their car has not such a good power to weight ratio.
 
From what I hear Monash won the 2011 FSAE-Aus comp.

With regards to wing design, many teams have tried but few have actually come up with a competent package.
 
Yes I read that also earlier today that Monash won.

That car has a crazy wing setup. Both wings can be controlled. I'm not really sure how they control the flaps but it looks impressive.
I also don't think that you gain anything with controllable wings as the straights are very short in FSAE at least in Europe.
 
Monash has some very talented aero guys. The chassis itself is back-to-basics and the aero package is CFD and wind-tunnel optimised as well as baked into the design process early on.
 
what nsx_23 said. Monash seem to have everything sorted, and keeping the chassis to a simple spaceframe helps with time management. I was track marshalling endurance on Sunday morning and they looked very quick on track even in the rain. Apparently they were a little dicey in teh arvo session, it was stupendously windy and at points they were driving on two wheels - some of the marshalls were talking about bringing them in because it was getting too dangerous, but they finished both sessions. Edith Cowan University were the only other team with a wing car, and they also did very well at comp.

Overall it was a great competition and most of the teams looked really strong from a completion viewpoint - we had 18 cars finish endurance this year, and most of the non-finishers still managed to crank out most of the laps, meaning we had cars on track from 9am till after 5pm with only a 15 minute break for lunch - pretty exhausting for the volunteers who had to be there the whole day! I managed to escape to the refuelling station in the afternoon.

This was also the first time that an Indian team finished endurance (Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee). They are an inspiration to everybody. It's well documented how hard resources are to come by in India (the only FSAE compliant engine available over there is a Royal Enfield), and these guys still managed to build a car which ran on track (albeit very, very slowly - the fastest lap times were somewhere in the low 60-second mark, and IIT were lapping at about 1:40-2:40 depending on the driver). Their first driver had never even driven any type of car before so it was overall a stellar effort. Also, they only used 1.08kg of fuel for the whole of their endurance run...if the Fuel Economy event in Australia wasn't time-restricted to 125% of the fastest lap these guys would have killed it!
 
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