2013 FSAE-Australasia

[JulianH]

I agree with Bob here. I did the "overview speech" for our team in the 2012 season and once in 2013 and I think it is important to give the judges an insight of what the team is planning. It's not a 5 seconds "Yeah we want to win" comment. We talk about a bit of history, of course our main concept and the goals of the car and afterwards how we want to achieve them.
In those five Design events, I always was approached by one of the judges who used my words as starting point of his questioning or wanted just to hear more about it from me.
I think without it (and with sadly some judges not reading the Design report...), the teams probably need a lot of time to tip the judges in the right direction, especially if their concept is different then the "normal" cars.

In Italy we had special Design Finals this year (all the teams had just 10 or 15 minutes to talk about their car, no questions), I think it's nice to mix things up a bit in Design, challenge the students but in the end, the "regular" Design event from the European events has proven itself to be "fair" at least to some degree.

In the UK 2013, we would have missed the Design Finals (I think they placed us around P13) before the moderators "regulated" the score, so two or three guys (cheers to Pat for saving us there ) decide who is making it to the Finals based on "looking at the car" and not really talking about it with the students, this is of course a bit tricky and I agree with Geoff that this "leveling" is a bit of probelamtic but in the end it works I guess.

[NickFavazzo]

Personally I loved the new format, I could call upon specific people to answer sub sytem specific parts instead of trying to remember specifics of a design that someone else on the team did. Z is correct in saying that if a team cannot say what "ideology" they designed to and why in a concise sentence then 5 minutes wont make that a hell of a lot clearer.

15 minutes was a good length, though I may suggest making it a little longer as it took most of that time to get into the meatier questions, that may have been caused by helping the judges understand what exactly we did with the suspension since it is not a standard wishbone setup. Overall 15 minutes felt good, It would be interesting to hear what the judges thought, did they have enough time to assess us?

Having judges who collectively know a lot about little (i.e. one topic) is better than having the one judge who focuses on VD, one on PT etc. I feel I could converse better with the small team of VD judges and it felt like more of a discussion than an interrogation.

Bob, the design report should clearly state design philosophy and every student involved should know this and the teams general philosophy, i.e. some teams are there for fun, some are there to learn, some are there to strive towards number one, some are there this year simply to build the team up, UWAMs motto is excellence through engineering innovation. General team goals stem from this, be it a reduced part count, more appropriate manufacture methods (i.e. composites due to more student labor=cheaper). Performance goals are, again, stated in the design brief and can be covered again in the design event. More specific load case stuff may take longer but that is to be expected.

In my opinion aerodynamics is not a main area due to tradition and the fact that not all teams even think about aero, 10 years ago would we have needed an Aero judge as much as we would have needed PT or VD? Aero is not required for a car to drive, a powertrain/VD system is. IMO Aero should have its own section.

One thing that would be nice is to have all judges at once for an hour, imagine that, talking now about drive ratios from a PT perspective through to diff selection (largely a VD concern) which will influence final drive etc.

Now I have recovered from what I would say to be the best competition I have been at since 2009, I need to thank all the teams that helped, I believe MUR and another uni lent us a ignition module before enduro 1, to Curtin for lending us reservoirs after ours proved to be a bit leaky, Monash and Laser3D for helping us with some new front rotors which they made on very short notice. To all the students, organisers and volunteers, thank you. I cannot wait to next year to see the new track layouts. UWAM will keep working hard to better this years result as I expect many other teams will do! I cannot wait!

Also thanks Z for providing some great discussions over the weekend. And Geoff, for lifting the Australian FSAE community to great new heights!

[HotRod Todd]

My $0.02, for what it's worth..
This year I feel that the new judging format was great, albeit s little brief, as many have alluded to.
My experience was having three judges fire off questions, as I was lead designer for engine and drivetrain, so while I was confident in replying to any/all questions raised, I was a little pressed for time and didn't end up getting much into the mechanical design of the drivetrain. The depth of questions were appropriate and the judges were awesome.
Compared to the previous two years where I had one judge ask banal and generic questions in a seemingly unenthused fashion, these three seened really on the ball and wanted to challenge what I thought I knew about what I'd been slaving away at for the last 18 months.
Geoff, the question on the 10kg 5kW magical part was a corker and I think, as gets to the crux of how a team would deal with such a proposition, reveals a lot about how a team would operate, which is a marker on how wholly thought out the design process attributed to the vehicle's design as much as yhe cohesiveness of the team's design philosophy amongst the lead designers.
In short, I appreciated and welcome the new direction in judging format, and would only wish that either it was 20-25 minutes long, or tgst I had another member of my team with me to be able to split the 'load' up a little.
I'm digging it.

[Big Bird]

Bob, you raise a good point about relative points allocations for the different judging groups. I was not happy with the prescribed percentages allocated to the different groups, as I agree with you fully that the design priorities vary between different overall vehicle concepts. I hope my other writings on these boards reassure you that my mind is firmly on big picture first, and that as designers we manipulate the relative priorities of our component subsystems to suit our own understanding of the problem.

I proposed a scoring system this year which didn’t make it through our organizing committee. As with many of my proposals this year, it polarized the committee into two factions: one of vocal and enthusiastic support (namely, me), and the other of a general, multi-faceted disbelief (those united by being “not me”)…

My proposal was that the teams actually nominate themselves the relative percentages by which their design scorecard will be assessed. It would work something like this:
- Firstly, 20% of the team’s Design score is allocated to Design Management
- For the remaining 80% of the score, the teams are given the judging categories (e.g. chassis, aero, braking, powertrain, etc.) and have to nominate prior to the event the relative proportions by which each of the categories will be scored on their scorecard.
- Judges mark their own area of expertise with a percentage score, based on the kind of rubrics we are marked on at uni – 50% is barely adequate understanding, 70% good understanding, 90% excellent understanding with evidence of creativity, innovation and synthesis of new ideas, etc. The final scoring for each section is the awarded percentage multiplied by the relative priority, and can be easily implemented with a decent spreadsheet.
- Part of the Design Management score is thus based on justifying the relative proportioning on priorities, the viability of the proportioning chosen, and how the presented product meets the intent of the nominated proportioning.

Now we do not want a system where teams just zero out their weak points – so each category is allocated a minimum allowed percentage value. And some aspects of vehicle design are important fundamentals to all vehicle projects, so I’d been thinking that the allocation to chassis / structural design, and maybe tyres / vehicle handling might be set at 20% each too. But I think that given the scope of viable concepts that this competition allows, there should be scope within the scoring allocations to reflect this. If the team places a high priority on mechanical grip, then lets see the proportioning of priority, the justification and the implementation. If the team places a high priority on aero grip, then lets see the proportioning of priority, the justification and implementation. Same for powertrain, ergonomics, etc etc etc.

The added bonus is that the judging teams get an additional document specifically outlining where the team’s priorities are, in cold hard numbers. So there is still something to work from if the submitted design review is the flavorless marketing-speak porridge it can often be.

I think there are some good lessons to be had in design process by getting the teams to quantify where their priorities lie and having to report on it. And, ultimately, being accountable for those decisions. For those who subscribe to the “everything is a high priority” school of design, they are going to get a nice reality check when their sum total adds up to more than 100%. The system puts the responsibility back on the teams to drive their own design process, rather than try to second guess “what the judges want”.

I'm going to try for this again in 2014. Feedback?? Thoughts??

[Mbirt]

Are fuel efficiency results for this competition available anywhere?

How did the post-competition car swap go? Reviews of other teams' cars from previous years have been some of the best reading on this forum.

[Big Bird]

Purpose of Design Judging:

Now bear with me on this one - if you don't read through this completely you might take offence at my initial statement. Just to preface this, I will state outright that my “angle” in this competition is primarily from an educational perspective.

The primary purpose of the Design Event judging is to rank and score the teams for the Design Event aspect of the competition. If we try to achieve any more than that over the time allocated then we risk not achieving this core objective. This year was my first as a Design judge, and from what I saw, by the end of 15 minutes there was not much the team could say that would have convinced me to change the score I had in my head. Sure, we could have continued the conversation - anyone who knows me would know that I could keep chatting for hours on the topic of FSAE / vehicle design. But by 15 minutes I had everything I needed to assess whether the team's knowledge was poor, good, exceptional or wherever else it lay on the spectrum.

The "design conflict" we face as designers of the design event, is that of how much time we need to rank and score the team's design effort, (both in terms of the students' knowledge, and its embodiment in the vehicle presented), versus how much time the students want to spend talking about their car. The first objective is a pragmatic one, and needs to be achieved in the minimum time possible, given the judges needed to repeat the process in this case 23 times across the day - and given that the teams also need to get away to get their cars finished / scrutineered that day too. The latter want, to converse with experts - which I'd characterize as "learning about engineering", "conversations about design", or even just plain old "education" - is one of the fundamental principles behind this whole competition. The question is, therefore, how much of this educational value needs to be embedded in the Design Event itself, and how much can we deliver elsewhere.

There is a distinct danger in trying to deliver a Design Event that is all things to all people. I would agree that it is our most prestigious event, and it is a disappointment to me that I was never part of a team that won Design. But just like in vehicle design, if we pile too many hopes / objectives / expectations in the one receptacle, we are going to end up with one Frankenstein’s Monster of a final product. (Note to self – print previous sentence, stick to wall above desk, re-read whenever you are about start writing another forums post …  )

So what we tried to do was deliver some more design conversations outside of the actual Design Event. Some ways we addressed this:
- The Saturday night Design Review: - We noted that the previous “design finals” system, amongst other things, gave 4-5 teams access to more time with the design judges. We thought it preferable that all teams have exposure to the Design judges, and thus the Sat Night Review concept was born. Initial plans to do a roving mike arrangement around the shed had to be shelved due to acoustics, so it became a bit of a panel sessions in the centre of the hall. Given the turnout, the generally positive feedback, and given we had to cut short the review due to security curfew, we will look at running a longer, more detailed session next year
- Roving Z :- Admittedly something that was implemented at the last minute, but Mr. Z was wandering the building all weekend chatting to teams and offering his thoughts to them. From what I observed, the conversations and the critiques seemed to be well received. I like the idea of some such conversations happening OUTSIDE of the design event, without the pressures of pointscores being dependant on them. We’ll see what other design experts / professionals we can find next year to do this too.
- I endeavoured to give some judging feedback over the commentary across the weekend - you are welcome to give feedback as to whether that helped or not
- Sunday afternoon guest drivers and interview session:- Thanks to CAMS, we had two top level drivers (Karl Reindler and Anton De Pasquale) drive a couple of cars after Sunday’s Endurance Event, and provide interview feedback on-mike. This was a great opportunity to get a drivers perspective on racecar design, and particularly on the value of good ergonomics.

We hope these initiatives were welcomed, and we are certainly looking for more ways in which we can deliver real design discussions with experts, and improve the educational outcomes of the competition itself. Certainly my favourite of the above is the roving critic, and I’ll do what I can to get more of these critics willing to engage in general design discussions with the teams for next year.

Thanks also for the compliments above, but please understand there were many more people than I who put in a lot more effort and achieved a lot more than I. I’d particularly like to acknowledge Andrew Green, who did a brilliant job to keep things rolling when I had to take time out, and also Rob Chadwick, Adrian Feeney, Scott Wordley and the members of the FSAE-A Consortium

Cheers all

Geoff

[Z]

Are fuel efficiency results for this competition available anywhere?

How did the post-competition car swap go? Reviews of other teams' cars from previous years have been some of the best reading on this forum.

Mbirt,

I guess the Fuel Efficiency results will (eventually) appear on the SAE-A site. From a cub-reporter's perspective I heard (from a very 3rd hand source) that U of Canberra-ADFA, the beam-axle car with a Yamaha WR450, had terrible engine tuning troubles all weekend. They eventually could only get it running by using some crazy, ultra-lean, map they found somewhere, and won FE with somewhere around 1.5 litres!

ADFA, please get in touch with Mbirt, who knows a thing or two about your engine...

I am also looking forward to the driver-swap write-ups. Pete Marsh was there and mentioned that he will post his feedback. IMO, this event is the ultimate "Design Review". Teams who claimed to have spent the year optimising their ergonomics, but had drivers exiting their cars with bruised knees and bleeding elbows, should take note.

Just wondering how "Driver-Swap" could be incorporated into the official "Design" event??? Probably not, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating...

Z

(PS. Geoff, just saw your last post. I am putting together a much longer-winded piece on "Critical Thinking and Criticism" right now. Hope it doesn't turn into a Frankenstein's Monster! )

[bob.paasch]

Bob,

FIVE MINUTES for an overview???

As I mentioned earlier the most successful teams at this comp were identifiable by their ability to give their high level "Team Mission Statement" and "Car Design Philosophy" in about FIVE SECONDS. The really successful teams had all their members singing these phrases in chorus.

"Win the competition" is easy enough for any team to say in 5 seconds. Describing the design process (for both organization and vehicle) that gives that result takes a little longer and requires a bit more insight.

To win, you have to score more points than the next best team. As knowledgable as most design judges are about how to make a car go fast on the track, very few have taken the time to build and validate an FSAE point simulation.

The only reason I can think of as to why you want five minutes, is that your team leader might right now be practicing his hypnotic suggestion techniques.
"Just give me five minutes with the Judges, and then ... [insert maniacal laughter...]".

Thanks for the suggestion Z, we'll get our design leads practicing this technique right away.

Also, aerodynamics was judged as part of the "Vehicle Dynamics" sub-section. IIRC, there was at least one dedicated Aero Judge, who insisted that even the non-aero cars should consider aero to some degree (ie. to reduce drag and unnecessary lift, for cooling flows, etc.)

Under the current rules, a well designed aero package is worth 50-100 points over the same exact car without aero. In my opinion, the only remaining valid reason for going non-aero is resource based. Under the current rules, a non-aero car design is incompatible with the goal of "win the competition."

[Z]

"Win the competition" is easy enough for any team to say in 5 seconds...

Bob (and others interested),

When talking to the teams in my cub-reporter's role, I started the discussion of "overall team goals" by asking if the team was primarily here "To Win the competition, or to Learn, or to have Fun". Note that I was asking a "Team Spokesperson" (ie. the first available member who was prepared to answer such questions) and not necessarily the Team Leader. The responses from the 23 teams were;

1. To Win = 4 teams.
2. To Learn = 10 teams (often with "we are mostly new members so want to gain experience for future years...").
3. To have Fun = 0 teams.
4. To Learn and have (some) Fun = 5 teams.
5. All of above (W+L+F) = 4 teams.

There seems to be a distinct bias towards the teams wanting to learn, which is entirely understandable. When talking to the students individually their desire to learn stuff (any stuff, high level concepts, low level details, +++) was also coming through quite strongly.

Bottom line, I don't think that the students gain much by spending long periods talking-up their design, while the DJs stand there like Easter Island statues, perhaps taking down the occasional note. Yes, I know the students will have to do just that when they move into their new jobs, but even then they will have a lot of learning to do...

Z

(PS. The Monash spokesperson said they were there to Learn.)

[GTS]

Being that 'at least one dedicated aero judge', I'll chime in...

...There seems to be a lack of clarity as to the point of FSAE. It's not about going racing, as technically the cars don't race. My take? It's about delivering a complex, large-scale project in a group environment. Which is a very difficult thing for students, which makes for a good - and valid, and salient - competition. It's also about preparing students meaningfully for the life in the automotive and wider engineering industries.

Whilst there's no prerequisite for engineering a Batmobile (aerodynamically speaking), those that attempted to were allocated a greater points share than those cars not having done so. There was some flexibility to this end. This said (and to echo the presentation given at the end of things), there's really no excuse for designing a prototype vehicle with complete oblivion regards to air flows. Yes, an engine is required to get a car moving, though in being assessed on a number of factors involving air flows and handling parameters, not having any idea of drag, of lift, of how to design cooling and engine air inlet ducts - is not good enough. Nor is it stuff that's particularly difficult to evaluate. A good number of cooling ducts exhibited evidenced unconsciousness in Fluids 1 - right about when Bernoulli came up. One student even suggested it might be a pasta sauce. I'm not kidding.

No team received perfect scores in aerodynamics, as no team deserved it. It's a difficult field requiring as much in systems engineering as it does in fluids and kinematics. I'll reiterate that despite some very 2013 tools being thrown at the aerodynamic development of some cars, they're not being applied in manners with sufficient fidelity or relevance to justify them. The aerodynamic packages seen could have easily been designed with considerably lesser resources, which was a key concern.

"As knowledgable as most design judges are about how to make a car go fast on the track, very few have taken the time to build and validate an FSAE point simulation."

I'm not sure of the point of the comment - whilst quite a few teams had these, very few could actually explain their workings, or explain or justify their limitations.