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In 1979 an SAE race took place at the University of Houston where university students were challenged to design, build and race Indianapolis 500-style vehicles made from wood and powered by a five-horsepower B and S engine. This continued and blew up into a national level competition amongst a growing list of the top Universities in the USA. From 1992, A consortium of car manufacturers kept the competition afloat-being a testament to the talent coming out of this, and in 2008 the event became funded solely through sponsorships by major OEMS, automotive giants registration fees paid by the universities. Over the years, this competition spread from USA to Europe covering Germany, UK, Spain, Netherlands, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic and recently Russia, Asia and Australia including China, Japan, and India. Teams from all over the world from various universities meet up in any of these events and compete with their prototype race car that can be Internal Combustion, Hybrid, Electric, Driverless, or even AI.
Formula Student is now the worlds most established educational engineering competition with its epicentre in Europe and USA. The competition involves a series of static and dynamic events that aim to push a team of young engineers or motorsports enthusiasts to develop and demonstrate their engineering skills. These include designing, simulating, manufacturing, testing and Validating vehicle systems and components concepts as well as teaching important soft skills such as project management, teamwork, and presentation skills to name a few. These are all skillsets that the industry demands, which means a crop of students who already possess these to large degrees are highly sought after. The competition is split into various stages which needs to be cleared by every competing team to be deemed fit for the series of dynamic tests their entry would be put through. The procedures are explained in the upcoming sections.
As per the Formula student rules of years before and present, each entry is meant to go through a series of inspections to deem it safe enough to compete in Dynamic events, in addition to a thorough check of rules obedience in the same. The list of inspections to go through concerning combustion vehicles is below as taken from the Formula student rules:
• Pre-Inspection is self-inspection done by class 1 competition entrants for certain mechanical rule checks. If cleared after submission of the spreadsheet online and on time – the competition entry jumps ahead in queue for the tech inspection, meaning they have more time to make attempts at the dynamic events.
• Mechanical Inspection involves a thorough rules check assuming pre inspection is not cleared and vehicle inspection if cleared. When mechanical rules clearance is achieved the, inspection sticker is awarded.
• Tilt test involves testing the full rollover stability of the vehicle by strapping it to a bed inclined at 60 degrees equivalent to 1.7g of cornering force. It also tests for fluids leakage at 45 degrees. • Vehicle Weighing checks for the whole vehicle mass as per ‘ready to race’ specifications, including fully filled fluids.
• Noise Test rules stipulate noise limits of the prototype at 103Db at idle and 110Db to the nearest 500 revs corresponding to 15.25m/s.
• Brake test requires the driver to accelerate and brake, locking all 4 wheels and coming to a stop within a certain distance without any veering.
The car must pass all the safety inspections before it can
compete in the dynamic events. Dynamic events are the ones that award most of
the points and as a result are considered the more important of the two types
of points scoring events. There are 5 dynamic events:
• Acceleration: This is to test a cars acceleration on a 75m
straight which the teams aim to complete in the fastest time possible.
• Skid-pad: This tests the cars cornering stability as it
drives around a constant radius figure of 8 turn in the fastest time possible.
This tests a cars grip and cornering ability, in addition to stability during
body roll.
• Sprint or Autocross: Fastest lap of a 0.8km circuit which
again attempts to evaluate vehicles handling characteristics.
• Endurance: Where the car is raced for 22km to test
reliability, handling stability, suspension vehicle dynamic design and build
quality. If any part of the car fails, or fluid leaks then it is disqualified.
Fuel economy is also gauged and scored accordingly. This is the toughest
challenge and many teams do not pass, however as this is the event where the
most points are awarded, it must be a priority to complete it reliably and as
fast as possible.
This is the presentation section, where a team’s ability to prospectively sell the vehicle to a group of judges, explain their engineering decisions in vehicle design and accounting for the prospective price of all subsystem assemblies are all tested.
• Design: The Goal is to show the relevant engineering decisions taken have been thought out and analysed, ranging from simulation or physical testing. Key design choices have been made and the team is expected to be able to present this to the judges in a clean and concise manner.
• Costing: This is to elaborate on the manufacturing processes followed by the team for their engineering system. The team is expected to justify and account for the cost of these per competition guidelines. Industry values this event as it can cover any component and is part of the procedure to getting systems designed and deployed in the real world.
• Business: Here the team must present a marketable business strategy for the weekend or amateur racing enthusiast. This can be compared to a dragon’s den style pitching process to an imaginary manufacturing firm, convincing them to buy into the team’s strategy.