2013 FSAE-Australasia

[Big Bird]

Hmmm. Never put earthmoving and FSAE in the same train of thought before. Maybe that is how we refresh the design challenge. Design a Bobcat for the amateur weekend autocross racer...

Thanks for the feedback, will raise this at the meeting

Cheers,

Geoff

[nowhere fast]

There are definitely similarities to be found between earthmoving and FSAE. For example “short tail” excavators aim to reduce the radius of the rotating upper half of the machine by packaging components close to the axis of rotation. A shorter radius allows the machine to work in smaller spaces such as road works.

This is similar to the aim of packaging components on an FSAE car as close to the centre of gravity as possible in order to reduce the car’s radius of gyration in yaw.

Inspiration often appears in unexpected places…

[Danny Sims]

Results table, with efficiency scores - https://www.dropbox.com/s/ku0njlfe3s...s%20Table.xlsx
I gave up on trying to calculate raw fuel numbers from the efficiency scores, but would love to see some numbers.

We found it interesting looking for trends between performance in individual events and overall score:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/v5fco5fcokpgml0/zmHAKFQqw4#/

[Mbirt]

Interesting fuel efficiency results here for the Oz competition. Kudos to the UWA team for the world-equivalent 85 points with a 4-cyl burning gasoline and a 190/300 endurance performance. It is also mind-boggling that ADFA won efficiency with an 87/300 performance in endurance. I also fried my mind trying to derive fuel consumption numbers without average laptimes.

When we set Vmin at FSAE 2013 at 1.67 l gas-equivalent, it required a 165/300 endurance finish to gap the competition in efficiency by a similar amount. Cal-Berkeley set Vmin at Lincoln 2013 at 1.93 l with a 176/300 endurance finish to gap the competition by a similar amount.

[Jonny Rochester]

Hi,
I was at the Werribee event just as a spectator. I had come from Hobart with my lecturer to have a look, and think about entering our selves in 2014. I took lots of photos, talked to a few students about their cars. As a spectator and not a participant, it was near impossible to see any "presentation" or know how the cars where judged. But just looking at the cars was almost enough.

Quick question: Can we use button head bolts to hold a aluminium floor to the bottom of the chassis?

Also, let this post be the first registration of interest for F-SAE-A 2014 from UTAS. We have built a chassis over summer!

[Jay Lawrence]

Hi Jonny,

Good to hear!

I don't see why you couldn't use button heads. Not sure why you would specifically want them though? There's a bit of discussion in these forums about critical fasteners, so you might want to do some searching. In your position I would probably confirm with the rules committee or just use SHCSs instead.

[Michael Royce]

Jonny,
It would be good to see Tasmania back in the series. My records show we haven't seen you since 2002 at Carrum Downs when Toyota was the host.

[Danny Sims]

Interesting fuel efficiency results here for the Oz competition. Kudos to the UWA team for the world-equivalent 85 points with a 4-cyl burning gasoline and a 190/300 endurance performance. It is also mind-boggling that ADFA won efficiency with an 87/300 performance in endurance. I also fried my mind trying to derive fuel consumption numbers without average laptimes.

When we set Vmin at FSAE 2013 at 1.67 l gas-equivalent, it required a 165/300 endurance finish to gap the competition in efficiency by a similar amount. Cal-Berkeley set Vmin at Lincoln 2013 at 1.93 l with a 176/300 endurance finish to gap the competition by a similar amount.

On that train of thought, believe these are the fuel numbers based on ADFA setting CO2min with 1.58kg of E85. Of note:

• ADFA winning efficiency by burning the least amount of CO2, with the 2nd lowest endurance score.
• Monash coming 3rd in efficiency by being fast, while burning the 5th highest amount of CO2
• While 3rd in endurance, MUR came 10th in efficiency by burning the highest amount of C02

Interesting how it works. UWA's fuel consumption is crazy