2014 fsuk

[JasperC]

My endurance times were quite far off what others are reporting. So I adjusted them and also looked at the efficiency scores including the rule change (FEFmin is now calculated rather than based on actual team's performance). My new estimate has Delft winning by about 14 points over KITc and Stuttgart, with ETH and Monash completing the top 5. All of those teams within 25 points.

Cones and penalties (was KITc out of order? will Delft get off-course penalties for standing still next to the track?) not included.

[BeunMan]

Top 3 overall:

1. DUT Racing Team
2. Rennteam Uni Stuttgart e.V.
3. KA-RaceIng

Rest at http://events.imeche.org/formula-stu...14/2014results

[mech5496]

Haven't been in FSUK as a competitor since 2010 (although I was a spectator in 2012), and the competition has gone up a few levels since! Everyone was really happy to help, queues were not massive and everything was resolved quickly, and static judging slots were timed correctly. Also it was the most sunny weather I ever had in FSUK, although we got some rain in endurance (I believe we were the only group of cars that ran under rain). Also WiFi coverage was satisfying, although not particularly fast.

On low points I would add the frustration caused with energy meters. We have passed all tech/noise/tilt/brake until 11AM on Friday, but then we were informed that we had to re-pass rain test after we install the energy meter, and until then access to test area was not allowed for us. When we finally got our hands on the energy meter, installed it and re-passed rain, test area was closed.

On other news, we managed to collect a trophy (Business Plan win on Class 2), scored 113pt on design which is an all-time high score for us, and had a fair placing in all dynamics; hadn't it been for the rain in endurance we would have placed a few positions above, but 15th overall for our first ever attempt with an e-car made us all happy!

I was really impressed with the ECU car, besides originality the build quality was awesome and drivers reallly knew their game! Delft and ETH were impressive as always, and it was a pleasure having long discussions with Chalmers, Darmstadt and Scott from Monash, hope to see you guys soon again!

[Dunk Mckay]

Not a bad weekend, although the rain yesterday was a little unpleasant. Sad news is that my camera battery decided it didn't want to be a battery any more and wanted to be a brick instead. So only got a few photos, not the dozens and dozens as I had promised, my apologies.

On a self centred note, I'm proud of my universities progress with the car. We left them a good baseline to go and develop and they have done just that. Second fastest combustion time and a team record was nice. Only being rewarded half of the available points for it was not. With constantly advancing battery technologies and rule changes unrelated to powertrain type THERE IS NEVER GOING TO BE A GOOD BALANCE BETWEEN ELECTRIC AND COMBUSTION POWERED CARS! We've all said it, I don't know why the IMechE is still trying to force that down our throats unless they want to save money on trophies. Duplicating the results spreadsheets is the only bit of additional work required to split the classes up. Promoting a "greener" image is all well and good but if you start to penalise and alienate half of the very people the competition is designed to help (the students) then you're barking up the wrong tree. The fuel efficiency rules don't help, either, where it's based on time as much as it is as fuel consumed. I'm only guessing, but I reckon this was implemented so that merging E and C classes was possible. However, the cars are already assess on time, there's 300 points in it for then, plus another 150 in AutoX. Ok so you don't want cars trundling round for the sake of fuel economy, so throw a 150% of fastest time rule clause on it, but otherwise just mark it proportional to fuel used. As it stands I'm confident pretty much no-one but the teams with tons of resources are spending time on their maps and powertrain designs chasing after fuel economy, because going faster gets you far more points, even in fuel efficiency! That's not exactly promoting a green image is it?

Sorry for my rant, but I just think it's completely silly and I'm going to keep banging this drum for as long as it takes for them to de-merge the two classes.

[JasperC]

I disagree about the economy/efficiency point. The idea to include endurance time in the efficiency scoring comes from FSG and has been in use there for years (I think since 2009). The reason is, at Formula Student you are required to design a RACE car. The intent is, in my opinion, to assess your fuel usage in racing conditions, not when driving on a straight at stationary RPM in a high gear.

Fuel efficiency, like all the other events, is there to reward good engineering. Fuel economy, as it used to be, did not reward good engineering but rather slow driving.

I agree with your other point though, mixing ICE and electric cars will always be a problematic and artificial balancing exercise.

[Mbirt]

Congratulations to Hertfordshire on the Fuel Efficiency win with a first year single--88.6 points in a mixed class with e-cars is excellent considering their 123.7 point endurance score. Consuming only 2.5 l of E85 is impressive and a 90-plus point score at this competition is possible with a faster pace while not using more fuel (Berkeley, Kettering, etc have does this). It is certainly much easier to compete with e-cars under mixed classification for "fuel" efficiency (even without regenerative braking) than it is to be competitive in acceleration. Why not lower the e-car power limit to 75 kW?

What happened to Stuttgart in autox? The competition could have been theirs had they run only slightly faster than Monash.

It's cool to see KIT running E85 in the AMG GTDI twin--excellent use of the fuel's properties and a much improved fuel efficiency finish too.

[BeunMan]

...Why not lower the e-car power limit to 75 kW?

There are plans to limit it by 5kW for 2wheel and 25-35kW for 4wheel electrics in 2015. See the other threads

The consideration with E85 (and petrol for that matter) is that faster tracks use more fuel in general. Since there weren't a lot of teams who actually ran it is hard to say if they could have gone faster with the same amount. The combination of the speed/fuel rule is however, as JasperC already told, that you can win the fuel efficiency while going fast.

[Z]

Just some quick comments here (more in the General section).
~o0o~

Given the ~30 odd years that FSAE has been running, Rear-Wheel-Drive (ie. two wheels ONLY!) combustion cars should by now be down to the low 3 second times in Acceleration, if not the high-2s. If you students stop bitching and moaning about E-cars having an "unfair advantage", and STOP COPYING LAST YEAR'S CARS (ie. start thinking for yourselves!), then you might eventually figure out how to do this. (And NO, it is NOT all about horsepower!!!)

To repeat, in general a RWD-only car has an ADVANTAGE in Acceleration over 4WD. Bleeding obvious really... Stand behind a horse, make a load noise, and see what happens...
~o0o~

The current 100 point Fuel EFFICIENCY event is equivalent to having a Fuel ECONOMY event that earns much less than 100 points, with the other points given back to Enduro (ie. with more points for faster cars). So "Fuel Efficiency" is simply providing a lower-than-100-point reward for fuel economical cars.

But in the spirit of hypocrisy that pervades all officialdom, "Fuel Err...something" is given a large number of 100 points to make it look like this is an "Engineering competition" intended to produce fuel efficient cars, rather than being just another race series.

Z

[TMichaels]

There is a reason in my opinion that no other competition with a reasonable number of electric entries still has merged classes. Due to the big difference in torque and efficiency, there will always be a misbalance in my opinion.
The only thing that is being done regarding merging of classes at FSG is giving a trophy for the team performing best in the dynamics with mixed scoring. But that is just a trophy, nothing more and in 2013 it was won by a combustion time btw., but due to problems of the most competitive electrics in at least one of the dynamic events.

[Dunk Mckay]

Given the ~30 odd years that FSAE has been running, Rear-Wheel-Drive (ie. two wheels ONLY!) combustion cars should by now be down to the low 3 second times in Acceleration, if not the high-2s. If you students stop bitching and moaning about E-cars having an "unfair advantage", and STOP COPYING LAST YEAR'S CARS (ie. start thinking for yourselves!), then you might eventually figure out how to do this. (And NO, it is NOT all about horsepower!!!)

To repeat, in general a RWD-only car has an ADVANTAGE in Acceleration over 4WD. Bleeding obvious really... Stand behind a horse, make a load noise, and see what happens...
~o0o~

The current 100 point Fuel EFFICIENCY event is equivalent to having a Fuel ECONOMY event that earns much less than 100 points, with the other points given back to Enduro (ie. with more points for faster cars). So "Fuel Efficiency" is simply providing a lower-than-100-point reward for fuel economical cars.

But in the spirit of hypocrisy that pervades all officialdom, "Fuel Err...something" is given a large number of 100 points to make it look like this is an "Engineering competition" intended to produce fuel efficient cars, rather than being just another race series.

Agree with you on the fuel "eff-conomy" front, Z.

But I don't agree that 2wd is better than 4wd for accel. Purely due to the fact that the cars have more htan enough power to spin the rear wheels at launch. traction control would merely limit the power going to the road, so not making maximum use of the power available, and biasing all the mass to the rear of the car to maximise traction on the rear tyres, will not only make the cars impossible to control but also just darn terrible in every other event. if the cars are breaking traction, and the coefficient of friction cannot be increased (short of cu$tom tyre compounds) , then the only way to accelerate off the line faster is to drive all 4 wheels.

Copying last years car is an industry standard, because well it works. It means the systems you are working with are familiar and the problems you encounter should be relatively easy to solve. If you had a dream team of engineers and experts then yes, starting from the ground up is ultimately going to result in the best car. But starting from the ground up with students who don't really know what they are doing and haven't got a clue how to manage a project properly, is just going to result in a half built car and a load of bodges.
I'd like to think the reason my old team did well this year, despite only finishing the car 2 days before competition, is because they took what we did last year, made the improvements we suggested as well as a some of their own. So they didn't need tons of testing to get the setup right or to figure out what would break and what wouldn't. This resulted in the second fastest C-car in accel (7th overall), for a team that, until recently only finished 1 in 3 endurance events. One of the reasons for this probably was that after a few years of looking into it there was someone on the team with the expertise, confidence and contacts to get custom gears made and put in the engine.
We had a student investigate how to implement a CVT gearbox a while ago, but he wasn't very bright. Ultimately, all we could conclude from his work was that it wasn't easy, and short of making a custom engine it would add a lot of extra weight to the car as the existing gearbox (even emptied) would still be there.

Is it possible for the best combustion car to outperform the best electric car in acceleration under the current rules? Maybe, but doubtful. If it is it's no doubt a insurmountable amount of work for a bunch of inexperienced students to have to do in the space of 10 months. So if FSAE is in the business of setting impossible challenges then sure, merge the classes.