2017/18 Preliminary Rules

[MCoach]

Having participated in Clean Snowmobile with Andrew, there are some downsides that come from being able to see everyone's reports.

You find some neat tricks within the rules, whether it may be a favorable scoring factor towards engine choice, costing methods, design components, etc. and people can openly analyze your methods....or blatantly copy them.
Every entry becomes an open book. I agree that teams could learn a lot from the top teams, but there is a risk that needs to be managed (preferably by the teams, themselves) of making good/bad decisions and not understanding why these things work or issues to look out for.

We brought a turbo ACE 600 to snowmobile competition in 2013, placing 2nd. The year after that 4 of these concepts were entered into the competition (3 showed up) running the same turbo and components from our design paper and cost documentation and placed 1,3,4 (of gasoline engines). In 2015, the concept went 1,2,3.
All teams had some issues with controlling knock from the engines, some learned how to manage it along with the other quirks that come with boosted, alternative fueled vehicles. The other end of this that one of the vehicle that rounded up the bottom was also a turbo ACE 600s, troubled by engine issues and controls.

Another thing that happened is that ETS found some questionable costing methods that became pretty commonplace by 2016 before the costing judges shut that down. They found something neat and everyone being able to see followed suit pretty quickly.

Just an alternative perspective from a similar world.

[JulianH]

Having participated in Clean Snowmobile with Andrew, there are some downsides that come from being able to see everyone's reports.

You find some neat tricks within the rules, whether it may be a favorable scoring factor towards engine choice, costing methods, design components, etc. and people can openly analyze your methods....or blatantly copy them.
Every entry becomes an open book. I agree that teams could learn a lot from the top teams, but there is a risk that needs to be managed (preferably by the teams, themselves) of making good/bad decisions and not understanding why these things work or issues to look out for.

We brought a turbo ACE 600 to snowmobile competition in 2013, placing 2nd. The year after that 4 of these concepts were entered into the competition (3 showed up) running the same turbo and components from our design paper and cost documentation and placed 1,3,4 (of gasoline engines). In 2015, the concept went 1,2,3.
All teams had some issues with controlling knock from the engines, some learned how to manage it along with the other quirks that come with boosted, alternative fueled vehicles. The other end of this that one of the vehicle that rounded up the bottom was also a turbo ACE 600s, troubled by engine issues and controls.

Another thing that happened is that ETS found some questionable costing methods that became pretty commonplace by 2016 before the costing judges shut that down. They found something neat and everyone being able to see followed suit pretty quickly.

Just an alternative perspective from a similar world.

You have a point.

Copying is potentially a bigger problem, but I don't know if the Report itself creates that. I mean you can walk to the cars of the other teams and LOOK what they are doing. At most events you can attend other teams design events and photograph their posters (a Chinese team videotaped our design event in 2013 at FSG...), or just talk to people.

If a "cheating" costing method is found, I think this loophole should be fixed from year to year. I have seen Cost reports where the core material of the wings was bought as a block and was not milled or cut so it was super cheap. Nobody noticed.

I don't like the secrecy in FSAE.
A couple of examples:
The tires that GFR uses in Wetpad. They scratched of where they are coming from to prevent others from using them.
The strange differential of Rennteam Stuttgart 2014. When asked they replied with "we decided as a team that we will not discuss it".

Every team of course can decide what they are doing and what they are telling others. I also agree that every team should have some "tricks", be it a special manufacturing process for CFRP parts or whatever, but I think in an environment where everyone should be able to learn as much as possible, QUESTIONS should be answered by the teams, if others ask politely... Maybe that is just my rose-coloured glasses which drove my into management consulting

[MCoach]

Yes, and it's just a simple point. I agree that this information should be openly shared, for the sake of learning.
Secrecy belongs to companies and teams that fiercely fight each other for market share and podiums, shouldn't be that way in FSAE. Unfortunately, a lot of sponsorship money rides on some teams performances. Some are told "You cannot register for other competitions unless you place top 10 at Michigan" by their advisors.

One part of that story is that the ACE itself has become a pretty dominant engine for the competition. So, moving to the engine itself wasn't exactly a difficult choice for anyone in the last few years.
ETS's method for costing for the competition wasn't exactly illegal due to how open the rules are for that competition, but it posed a favorable environment for teams from Canada. Currency wasn't normalized for their rules so any receipts/quotes from a Canadian supplier became 15-25% cheaper.


I've seen GFR use grooved LC0s for wet skidpad and their attempt (engine didn't start) at 2013 FSAE-Michigan in the past few years. The one's I've seen just have the Hoosier "Wet" groove pattern in them. Can't say if this is the same for the European events.

Again, I agree with you. I just wanted to pose a scenario.

[Kevin Hayward]

What is wrong with copying?

Human advancement is built on copying and modifying.

Life itself is built on copying and modifying. Take out the copying and it all stops, take out the modifying and nothing gets better.

The best way to ensure that the field keeps improving is to allow it to copy the best. It is the mutations (sorry I mean modifications) that will lead to the best becoming second rate in a few seasons. The only sadness there is for those that jealously guard information in the hope that they can hold a competitive advantage at the expense of the fitness of the population (sorry I mean competition).

Even for the top teams it is a completely ludicrous position to hold. If we imagine that this information is shared from 500 teams around the world. Not wanting this shared keeps your information from getting out, but it also prevents the information from 499 teams coming in. If it was a two team competition it makes some sense given the information you receive is likely less valuable than what you gave. However even if 99% of the information you get from the 499 teams is not worth receiving you gain more from the 1% you get back than what you gave out.

And just before I get accused of this encouraging non-competition I want to ensure you nothing could be further from the truth. If we look at the evolutionary process we see the following steps:

1. Start with a population

2. Select the highest performing members of the population

3. Copy the best performing members of the population and modify through mutation (and possibly combination) to create a new population

4. Return to step 2


Take away the competition and there is no improvement. Take away copying and the process stops. Take away new information (i.e. mutation) and all long term improvement is halted. It should be noted that this process works incredibly well both in real life and simulated.

Pretty simple approach to trying to promote the best ultimate solutions are as follows:

- Develop an appropriate selection method / competition
- Promote the sharing of information (copying / combination)
- Promote new information (mutation / innovation)

If you want to know more go and have a good look into the field of evolutionary computation, or speak to a farmer, or start breeding guppies.

Cheers,

Kev

[JulianH]

I've seen GFR use grooved LC0s for wet skidpad and their attempt (engine didn't start) at 2013 FSAE-Michigan in the past few years. The one's I've seen just have the Hoosier "Wet" groove pattern in them. Can't say if this is the same for the European events.

Again, I agree with you. I just wanted to pose a scenario.

They ran 13inch the last 2 years.
http://media.formulastudent.de/FSG15...euplein-X3.jpg

Could be a regular R25B 13inch cutted or a WET, don't know. Probably found something good

[JT A.]

Here's an example of how sharing design reports could be used to a positive or negative effect on the competition. Lets say that a team that does very well in design has some engineering approach to selecting spring and damping rates. Maybe it involves collecting track data, doing some FFT analysis to see what frequencies most of your suspension movement is occurring at, using a 1/4 car suspension model to minimize tire load variation. Or maybe it involves some kind of weighted compromise between tire load variation and aerodynamic platform control. So their design report describes the process they used, and they came up with 3.4Hz ride frequencies with 1.1 damping ratio.

If design reports get published, some teams will read that and think "that's an interesting approach, lets try that and see what we come up with, or see if we can test/validate/improve that methodology. Students learn, the competition gets better, sharing design reports has served a good purpose.

Other teams will read the best team's design report and say "Team X runs 3.4hz ride frequency, 1.1 damping ratio, that's what we're going to do too."

The teams that use the published design reports "the right way" to learn more makes it worth doing. Even if some teams use it "the wrong way" and just copy. The teams that are coming up with good designs and design processes will feel like they are losing an advantage by giving that info to other teams. I think it falls on the design judges to sort out who are the good engineers and who are the copy-cats, and score them appropriately. If they can do that fairly and consistently, the teams that do the best engineering still keep some advantage, but the rest of the teams will be stronger and more competitive. Overall a net positive.

[mech5496]

Agree with the open everything concept as well. Speaking of fuel efficiency (mentioned on previous page), I cannot see why a fuel flow limit is not imposed instead of an air restrictor; this would push teams in pursuing more efficiency out of their engines

[Charles Kaneb]

Cole,

Half of the Texas A&M Racing Secrets are in Neil's book, the other half are distributed with Claude's seminar!

-CPK

[Claude Rouelle]

I have seen a few good and even a few excellent cars in FSAE/FS and I have a few good memorizes of the science, logic, and the clarity, the rationality, the objectivity, (and the enthusiasm!) that was used by some students to defend their car design choice, simulation, drawing, assembly, testing and validations phases.
Some of them were able to come back to me with sound counter-arguments when I purposely disagree with them.
A design judge disagreeing can be a bad sign because the car is not so nicely designed or executed or, worse, the students have no validation at all.
Or it can be a good sign because the design judge pushes to know how deep the students’ knowledge is.
When, after having covered the basics, a design judge is asking very detailed and picky questions the students should look at it as a sign they are doing well.

But here is my point: I have seen good car and have listen to good arguments but I never saw a design report that knocked my socks off.

Some reports are really bad (often they come from teams who do not really care), some are average.
Some are good (these are the ones that excites my curiosity, that makes me want to see the car closer and engage in a good engineering conversation)
But I never saw an amazing design report.

I guess one of the reasons of this is that it is difficult to show all your knowledge, know-how and accomplishment in just an 8 page report, let alone several weeks before the competition.


So here is an idea.
In the same spirit as the business review, why don’t we have each of the top 3 design finalists going on stage for let’s say 50 minutes.
25 minutes to make a power point presentation with video, graphs whatever, simulation, data analysis, whatever they need (but it must remain an engineering presentation, it can’t be a long marketing video)
of the how / why/ how much of their design choices and test validation and 25 minutes of Q&A from the students.

Maybe the questions should be only asked by students of any other teams.
The design judges would attend but would not ask any question.
The design judges would afterwards use their appreciation of how each team did defend their car design and how they were able to defend their choice in public during the Q&A as one of the criteria (but not the only one - the usual design judging process will still go on) to determine who the design winner is.

[turtle]

So here is an idea.
In the same spirit as the business review, why don’t we have each of the top 3 design finalists going on stage for let’s say 50 minutes.
25 minutes to make a power point presentation with video, graphs whatever, simulation, data analysis, whatever they need (but it must remain an engineering presentation, it can’t be a long marketing video)
of the how / why/ how much of their design choices and test validation and 25 minutes of Q&A from the students.

This is a fresh idea that I think is worth entertaining. Taking the top 3 design finalists represents 2.5% of the total number of entrants at Michigan, but lets start somewhere. Here are some reasons why I think this might be an interesting change.

The design review is not very informative. The design review at the end of the competition is supposed to explain to students why a team won the event, but the message gets condensed to the simulate/test/validate motto. After several years of hearing this, I am sure there are frustrated students who just are not figuring out exactly what this means. Instead of telling the students why they won design, just show them why!
Technical communication is a design consideration. The industry is filled with engineers of all disciplines, and lets not forget that other professions exist as well. The ability to communicate and justify decisions to a wider audience is a life skill. Students must show that they can not only demonstrate depth, but breadth of knowledge and the ability to convey it to others. Design finalists will have incentive to present their best content if some points are allocated for the presentation.
Students can be leaders in the competition. Presenting as a design finalist sets the benchmark for everyone and reduces the mystery of the design event. Students will show students what makes a good FSAE car. The design event is no longer about pleasing an impossible design judge but rather improving and learning as a student.

Hopefully you end up with three unique presentations highlighting three different concepts. The goal here is to open the design event for students to see. What might be satisfactory for a design judge might be the biggest revelation for a student.

OK this doesn't address the concerns about subjectivity in the design judging or the copying problem, but lets start somewhere.

Using Kevin Hayward's notion of the genetic algorithm, lets consider FSAE as a search problem. Some questions to ask when considering a rule changes: Is the competition in a minima and is this global minima? Do we want to encourage or discourage the use of greedy algorithms? Is there sufficient diversity within the population? How will the change influence the search?