FSAE Innovation

[RiNaZ]

i was just curious with some new designs that i saw during the competition.

To western washington univ., how did that custom made dampers helped in your enduro? did you guys get more advantage with a custom one that a stock FSAE dampers?

To those teams with wings, did you guys gain anything with having wings?

To University of Quebec, did the lighter carbon fiber car helped you guys in enduro? And did the telemetry helped too?

And to Western Australia U, how did you guys made the tub without autoclave?

thanks guys!

[RiNaZ]

i was just curious with some new designs that i saw during the competition.

To western washington univ., how did that custom made dampers helped in your enduro? did you guys get more advantage with a custom one that a stock FSAE dampers?

To those teams with wings, did you guys gain anything with having wings?

To University of Quebec, did the lighter carbon fiber car helped you guys in enduro? And did the telemetry helped too?

And to Western Australia U, how did you guys made the tub without autoclave?

thanks guys!

[mtg]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by RiNaZ:
To those teams with wings, did you guys gain anything with having wings?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes, more speed to win the race.

[RiNaZ]

Just curious mtg, during the R&T awards, your car seems to be spinning everywhere, is the wing a disadvantage during the wet?

Well i know the wings generate downforce and all and should give you more grip, but my question is more directed at the possibility that the wing adds more weight to the car and that's why the car wasnt having a lot of grip?

[James Waltman]

Oh the innovation question.
To specifically answer your question: I don't think that our shocks really gave us an advantage in the endurance event. They certainly didn't hurt us though. I'm not sure what a stock FSAE damper is.

We thought that they would help us in Design. They didn't and we were disappointed. Not just the custom shocks but we also made a huge percentage of the parts on our car. I dare say we made more than any other school does by a long shot. I think that all of the stuff we make ranges from at least mildly innovative to full on crazy.
We didn't have any team members with us this year that had been to competition before so we didn't really know what to expect. We figured we would do well in the Design Judging if we actually designed and manufactured as much as we could. That was not the case. I know that the point is to explain the design to the judges and show why you did things. We had so much to show that we didn't really have enough time. (I know that is a common complaint.) We figured that we would have more time in the Design-Semis to show off the rest of our stuff and give more explanation. We didn't make it that far in the judging – in fact our score was pretty poor. So designing your own parts and manufacturing them is not the way to do well in the Design competition on its own – regardless of how innovative they are. It is still not very clear to me exactly what it takes to do well in the Design event. Some of the other teams clearly have it figured out and we didn't. Maybe they could give some more pointers here. I'm not complaining about how we did – it was all about learning. We had a great time.

We were talking to the Cornell guys as we packed up on Sunday. Apparently they got knocked in the design finals for not having any innovation. They were trying to figure out what they could do. Their thought process appears to be – make it better each year until you don't have to make it better anymore. So then they don't have enough innovation. We showed them our car – innovation and cool stuff galore. Then the question from the Cornell guy (sorry I forgot his name) was ˜which do the judges really want'? It seems to me that the Cornell approach is what they are really after – they made it into the Design finals on the strength of a well sorted car and knowing all of the answers. The teams that were innovative didn't make it as far. I know that the Cornell car has a lot of cool things on it and they were great when we were pestering them with questions.

The strength of our program has always been the ability to try crazy stuff. Our advisors give us plenty of rope to hang ourselves with. So now we need to try to decide what we will do for the next car. One option is to tone it down a bit and get it sorted out. The other option is basically what Denny said in another post : "let's make every part on the car cooler than anything else that's been done..."�

Congratulations to the other innovative teams. I got a chance to see a few of them but I'm sure I missed a bunch. Everyone should post some pictures of the cool stuff they did.

Colorado State nice car and a sweet gearbox
RWTH Aachen with the trick cone type CVT and the Mahle engine
Lehigh lots of cool stuff

[Michael Jones]

I seem to recall a thread on this sometime last year re: innovation vs. winning, but I'm too lazy to find in right now.

Cornell's approach can be problematic with respect to innovation. We do engage in research and development, there's no question. But you won't see it on the car until it's bulletproof or close enough. Even the e-wastegate this year was a bit of a stretch - that cut very close to our latitude of rejection, by the end, since it wasn't tested until much later than we'd have liked.

Cornell's approach is very much based in systems engineering, which is very much based in defense and aerospace. It's inherently conservative and iterative as a result.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing - we design to competition requirements, do little else beyond it, and unveil new things when they can meet our standards. We're never going to slam any old thing on the car and hope it flies. Things like e-wastegate have been in the works for a few years, as were our custom shocks last year.

Innovation takes a lot of time here, but when it's done, it's usually done well out of the gate.

That said, we're very unlikely to jump to, say, a Lehigh 300lb. object anytime soon. Frankly, that takes cajones that we don't have - it's not a trivial task to completely reinvent the basic fundamentals of a FSAE car like that, and given the history we have to leverage, it's even less likely.

Radical innovations inevitably come from those with nothing else to lose - and those that are successful can redefine an entire industry and sometimes catch former giants asleep at the switch.

That said, true giants don't stay dormant for long. We've certainly followed and thought about both aero packages, carbon monocoques, and recently Jay O'Connell's fantasy midget car, but we're not in the running to better any effort on any of them. Yet.

[James Waltman]

Some pictures of the shocks. We made the bodies, valves, rods, spacers and even the adjuster wrench. Renton Coil Spring made custom Titanium springs for us (we had students doing internships there).

[B.K.]

Yeah, its tough to know when the benefits of an innovative or manufactured-in-house design outweigh the minuses.

Is the slight weight reduction and debatable performance improvement of a custom widget worth the decrease in reliability and the increased manufacturing time (which results in less testing time and less reliability of the car as a whole)? Better be a damn light brake caliper or one hell of a trick damper.

That said, there's no reason that the design event can't lean more towards innovation, like James was saying. That would put more pressure on top teams to continue to push the envelope and would reward teams that had the balls to put their new design on the line.

Still, if they did that and I was a Cornell team leader and I found out that no car that didn't have five trick parts would make Design Finals I'd say screw it. I'd rather have a rock solid car with three months of testing on it than be proud of the fact that I made 99% rather than 90% of the racecar myself.

When it comes down to it, the only real goal is to win the FSAE competition.

[Sam Zimmerman]

Excuse me while I get on my soapbox again.

I have to disagree with the last line in Ben's post. I think there are many real goals.
- Learning as much as possible in your discipline
- Gaining real experience towards a dream job
- Getting a dream job
- Personal growth
- Sharing your ideas, analysis, and designs with as many other students as possible so that everybody may learn.

The last is probably the most admirable goal, in my opinion.

There was one team in particular which had an attitude of privacy, even to the point of asking a teammate of mine to bring his camera by their paddock to ensure there was nothing "private" on it. I feel sorry for this particular team as they have competed in this competition so long that they have forgotten what it is all about. Unfortunately I also lost a lot of respect for their faculty advisor because the attitude of secrecy over the sharing of ideas comes from the top and I assume that he has lost his way in terms of results over education. In talking to others at the competition, I was not alone in these beliefs.

I would love to win the competition and I congratulate Cornell for doing so this year. It takes discipline, desire, and more hard work than many can imagine. Winning is a worthy goal, but isn't and shouldn't be the only goal.

You can have the soapbox back now.

[B.K.]

I can't aruge with the value of all of those things, Sam. I agree those are valid and real goals. What I should have said is that winning the FSAE competition is the driving goal. The vision of wining the competition is behind every decision that you make as a team, and as you follow that vision all those other important benefits are realized as well.

My point was only that you don't make your engineering decisions based on what will result in you learning more, or what will get you a good job later, or what will impress the girls at the bar the most. You make your team decisions based on what you believe will put you in the best position to win.