, an extracurricular team of School of Engineering undergraduates, will compete in May 2014 in the annual Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) event at Michigan International Speedway near Detroit. The event is the culmination of a yearlong process to develop a small, affordable formula car that could be marketed to amateur racers.
Teams are judged not only on the design and performance of their cars but also on the quality of their business presentations. The judging criteria are so strict that, of the 120 teams that enter each year, typically fewer than 40 cross the finish line.
鈥淚 know it sounds strange,鈥� says Phil Davis, an engineer in the School of Engineering dean鈥檚 office who advises the Motorsports team, 鈥渂ut many teams enter just hoping to finish the competition rather than win it. We would love to win, of course, but it鈥檚 really more about the learning experience.鈥�
1. Design
The car鈥檚 design begins literally from the ground up.鈥淭he tires鈥攖hat鈥檚 where you start,鈥� says team leader Eric Bramlett, a junior majoring in mechanical engineering. 鈥淵ou look at the tire data and figure out how they鈥檙e going to perform. Then you design a suspension that can hold them, and from there you start connecting the dots.鈥�
2. Build
Team members work from their designs in CAD (computer-aided design) software to make many of the car parts themselves in the School of Engineering鈥檚 machine shop. 鈥淲e鈥檝e always felt like you learn more when you build your own parts,鈥� Davis says. 鈥淧lus, it forces you to make the parts simple鈥攁nd simple means less cost and fewer problems.
3. Test
The team fine-tunes the car鈥檚 design and performance before competition by testing it on local racetracks and in empty parking lots. 鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to find that balance between reducing the weight as much as possible while also making sure that things don鈥檛 fail,鈥� Bramlett says. 鈥淚f the car could hold together just long enough to reach the finish and then fall apart, that would be ideal.鈥�
4. Compete
The competition includes 鈥渟tatic鈥� events, like the design review, cost report and business presentation, as well as 鈥渄ynamic鈥� ones that test the performance of the car. Of the latter, the 22-kilometer endurance test is perhaps the most demanding. 鈥淚f something comes loose from vibration, you鈥檙e out. If you drip oil, you鈥檙e out,鈥� Davis says. 鈥淎n entire year鈥檚 work could come to an end because of one small mistake.鈥�
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Bonus Content
Photos of the 菠萝视频 Motorsports team and their project