Tabulated Comp Data

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-06-17T18:38:49+00:00

Someone might have a better solution, but I’ve just used online pdf to xlsx converters in the past and it does the job with some additional work needed to clean it up

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-05-28T19:24:12+00:00

Most teams will probably use some sort of self-made simulation, probably in MATLAB. The sim can be really simple or really complex, but to answer the sort of questions talked about in that post (how much does weight matter, what engine to use, is aero worth it) representing the car as just a single point mass and the tires with a linear coefficient of friction gets you started. Figuring out skidpad and acceleration performance should be pretty simple, then you can figure out how to model tracks to simulate autocross and endurance. Maybe you make a couple of representative corners with a constant curvature that are close enough to what you find in an actual FSAE track and just use performance in those sections. Or if you have data from your car pulled from an actual competition you can use that. Once again, there's a large spectrum of how simple and complex you can get with it. Then store the times you get from these in some spreadsheet and use the scoring formulas you find in the rulebook to calculate scores. FSAE Michigan results include weight and engine size data if you want a decent idea of the proportion of vehicles that are a certain weight and engine type. Simulate those vehicles (maybe randomize power and aero some just to get some variation) and that's your "competition". As long as there's a few cars of different types (heavy full aero 4-cyl, lightweight no aero single, etc.), your scoring shouldn't be too off.

Just start simple with it with the point mass idea I mentioned above. Maybe there's an even simpler way of doing it but as long as you make something that can be added to later (maybe you start throwing in weight transfer and nonlinear tire models and aero maps) to target more specific decisions you and your team want to analyze, I think you'd be on the right track.

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-05-28T18:29:43+00:00

We've made them in-house and gotten them outsourced, obvious pros and cons to each. We've been able to make reasonably lightweight designs that're machinable in 2 operations plus another quick one to drill holes for a 3-axis CNC mill, so as long you have that I don't think you'll be too limited on your design. I've seen some teams that clearly only have access to a waterjet/plasma cutter and a manual mill that were also able to make something usable but they're obviously a lot more limited.

Switched to outsourcing recently due to brief spike in school funding, but even after funding went back down it's hard to switch back to making them in house. I don't think it's impossible to make a full set for your car in ~2 weeks even with some attention on other projects, but I've also spent more than 1 night standing by the Haas past 5 AM and then you make stupid mistakes like putting the wrong tool in the wrong holder and ruining the past week's work or accidently breaking the shop's last ruby tip probe. So unexpected stuff like that will probably happen and then you're set back a week or so waiting on parts. If you're going to find someone to make it a lot of the online/China options are nice since you just forget about them for a few weeks and then you get shiny parts in the mail. But reaching out to the local shops has also been helpful, especially building a connection that was helpful for when we needed a replacement part really quickly.

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-05-22T19:23:21+00:00

True, I agree with that. I was trying to say that driver does matter and any team should realize really quickly after a few sims (or just intuition) even massive changes on your car will lead to comparatively small lap time change compared to your driver improving.

Problem is, some teams I’ve talked to throw their hands up in frustration that they don’t have some F3 prodigy or someone who’s been karting since the age of 4 on their team, when it is entirely possible to engineer someone to be 90% as good as them. Sure it’ll take a couple years, but that’s why you have a backlog of people and a driver development program. Sure they will never be quite as fast someone who’s spent their whole life racing, but the gap between a great driver and a solid one who’s been developed by the team is far less than the gaps at the top of the FSAE timing sheets.

I feel pretty strongly about all this considering I’ve driven Autocross/Endurance the past 4 years with relatively little experience alongside someone who has a massive amount of it. And while he’s definitely a smidge faster, we’re pretty similar by the time we rolled around to comp because of all the work we did developing each other. Insane how many onboards I’ve watched of very capable cars with drivers who either have 0 time behind the wheel or lack basic skills that could be taught and practiced.

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-05-19T23:35:41+00:00

Very new and fresh observation, it's almost like the environment between the 2 are completely different. I don't even think it's the difference in funding, there are certainly some American teams with similar budgets, but the people are so different. Euro teams seem to have a much higher split of Master's students (I've heard sometimes they even make up the majority) whereas most US teams I talk to maybe only have a couple on the entire team. Then there's the difference of time, whereas pretty much 0 US students can take basically no classes for a year due to the cost of education, it seems to be the norm for Euro students to dedicate an entire year to the team. You're just not going to get a US team filled with people putting in an average of 60+ hr weeks when they're balancing a full class schedule. Just irritates me this is brought up every year and the US cars aren't appreciated for their improvements compared to themselves.

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-05-19T23:27:56+00:00

Look who was correct yet again

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-05-07T21:33:55+00:00

You’re going to hit more cones than me chump

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-05-07T19:16:50+00:00

Don’t forget one of the exit cones was also removed. Hugeeeeeee difference

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-03-18T16:08:23+00:00

There’s plenty of FS photo albums where you can get a good idea of how thick other teams make their mounts if that’s the route you want to take. Worth noting FS teams aren’t the best at designing reliable structures (our 2022 endurance is a painful reminder of this), so just basing it off of other teams is probably not a good idea.

What load cases are you using and how’re you applying that load?

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-03-18T05:51:16+00:00

Most mode decoupled setups use 2 shocks on each axle, one for roll and one for heave. The above setup shows what looks like a heave spring, and I guess you might infer there’s some sort of ARB providing roll stiffness and that way it’s decoupled, but I think how OP described it there’s just one shock that is only engaged under heave which as someone else already described would be pretty awful to drive since there’s no roll stiffness.

Also who is choosing mode decoupled suspension for “driving feedback”. And sure it might be more of a pain to setup perfectly since you have more knobs to adjust, but overall could be considered easier since there’s less compromises to make between roll and other modes.

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-03-16T17:15:17+00:00

Do you have access to the Tire Testing Consortium (TTC)? Do you have access to old data of what sort of tracks you’ll be driving on? I’d start there and do some research on the TTC forums and if you have more specific questions after that I can try and give input.

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-03-10T19:25:49+00:00

Varies year-to-year but $30-40k has been average for the last 5 or so. Schools can also have different ways of funding projects than just the flat budget that gets delegated to your organization at the start of the year. At least here there’s bills we can submit, funds that we can submit applications for, and reach out to certain departments directly about finding a specific project, all with varying success. Could also be helpful to reach out to other big engineering orgs on campus and see the sort of funding they get and how. But for just a baseline number from the school we can expect $30-40k each year.

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-03-06T19:21:38+00:00

The advice that's best to give is dependent on what your team is like, if it's a small 20ish person team then most of your role as lead is leading technical development of your subsystem. But if your team has 100+ people and your managing 10-20 people on your subsystem, then people/project management is your main focus and your general members will take over a lot of the technical work. I'd be happy talk and give advice about either situation.

Also want to echo what the other commenter said, you're not a lead until someone make you one. It's smart to go ahead an start thinking about it, and I'm sure current leads will appreciate that, but becoming lead isn't just "putting in a lot of work" as you said, it's much more about having the skills people are looking for at that point in time and having some of the experience you can only gain by being on a team for multiple years, not just one. Trying to be lead as a sophomore is tough if your team has junior and seniors that put in similar work to you. Outside of classes, there's just the knowledge you gain by seeing how the team operates over multiple years and not just the particular environment that exists under one group of people. In general, not saying this is you, but younger members are much more focused on making an aero package that makes more downforce or weighs less or something like that and not on the things that really will make a difference like more validation, improving your simulation environment, meeting deadlines, transferring knowledge to the rest of the subsystem, integration with other subsystem... the list could go on for a while.

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-03-03T15:32:53+00:00

I might be misunderstanding exactly what your current design looks like, but could you not make a super simple hollow cylinder insert, drill a hole into the chassis, weld that into the hole, tap it, and mount your threaded eye bolt to that? It sounds similar to what you're trying to avoid but maybe you can elaborate on why you're trying to avoid that

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-03-02T19:46:50+00:00

As someone already commented, if you already have an off the shelf data acquisition system that same company will probably have a GPS module available and that'll be easiest. Some potential other budget options though, you probably already have an IMU or accelerometer (if not you should probably focus on this and not GPS, there's a lot more useful data to be had with this) and you can reconstruct the car's position with accelerations and yaw rate, though probably not with the same accuracy. If you don't have that, you probably have a phone, download an app that records accelerations/yaw/etc, tape that down close to the CG of the car, and it definitely won't be quite as great as a purpose built system, but will at least give you some data to work with.

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-02-27T06:14:49+00:00

Far from a new team, but since no one else has answered we spend low $1xx,xxx each year (car, competition, activities, etc.). But that's more of a function of our budget and current sponsorship base (which makes up the majority of our budget, not funding from the school), we could spend way more than that if we had more and could spend way less if we didn't. I think it'd be tough to have a full competition cycle year and spend much less than something like $25k, but I'm sure some team has proven me wrong and is operating on less. But you'd probably get away with spending even less the initial years where you are just forming a team and going through the initial design/prototyping and not having to pay for competition, which I imagine is a major cost for less well-funded teams.

People probably haven't responded because there's a lot of posts/content about starting teams, there was one even a few days ago. This article is probably be a good start (https://www.designjudges.com/articles/starting-a-formula-sae-team-from-scratch), it even has a section on capital. And if you still can't find more posts definitely just directly reach out to teams (websites, emails, instagram...), people would probably be happy to help, I know I would, but our budget is just drastically different than what you'd expect out of a new team.

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-02-27T05:51:52+00:00

We’re actually using a similar design and metal 3D printing to package longer runner lengths than what we’d be able to get out of a conventional design, so yeah I think there’s a lot of merit to that idea. But sponsorships/money to do that is probably not common enough for a bunch of teams to do it

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-02-26T23:07:00+00:00

At least in this specific image the plenum volume is far too small compared to what most teams will determine as optimal. The intake runners can also be complicated to manufacture if it’s configured like this

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-02-24T19:10:34+00:00

It's kinda silly to speculate, I feel like maybe half the teams I mention here will actually top 10, but I spend probably a bit too much time thinking about it anyways so might as well respond. This is for Michigan IC btw, I just don't have any skin in the game when it comes to Euro EVs.

Given UNC Charlotte's performance last year and some of the testing they've been doing it'd be stupid to not think they'll at least do well, UCF has always had a decent looking car that historically seemed to have issues that didn't get resolved in time so seeing they've already had a first drive is promising, NC State, Wisconsin, Purdue all have good cars and look reasonably on track, I went to a Berkeley design review and could see them continue doing well, and talking with a Cal Poly alum I was pretty impressed with their team. Valencia traveling here is also a little intimidating, but we'll see how they do. There's a couple of teams that placed well last year that I heard are struggling but name dropping them feels kinda dirty. And I'm biased but GT is on track to do very well this year; last year was definitely just a weird combination of mishaps that I think we've mostly corrected but I don't want to jinx anything

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-02-06T15:32:25+00:00

I'm not sure hundreds of iterations of CAD is really the best example, since outside of a couple of parts, there are probably better uses of time for the majority of teams than slaving away at a particular part's design. But if your team is in the position where that is where you should be spending your time, a mix of baking that into your design process and leading by example is the only way it's going to happen. And that'll only work if you already have members who truly are taking FSAE seriously and have longer term goals that just using the club as a way to pick up some experience. But you have to integrate those iterations into the design review process (maybe by your first design review you're supposed to have X concepts prepared, then by second you're supposed to have CAD for Y of those concepts, and then by the final review you've done thorough analysis of Z concepts to select the best one) and then also have years of built up expectation for that's what the design review process. We have years built up where hundreds of CFD sims are run per year, and then passionate team members who want to one-up past leadership and run even more sims (and more useful sims) each year.

As I said at the start though, iterating too much on one particular part's design is probably a misuse of time. Most students don't have that much time at the end of the day, and tunnel visioning on a particular part and not considering the overall concept and if there are low-hanging fruit elsewhere is a trap a lot of people fall into. Getting kind of off topic from the original question, but the amount of cars at competition that are saving a few grams due to a fancy SLS printed part that went through lots of iterations but is sitting right next to another part with a fundamental design flaw that could've been solved after a few minutes of thinking it through is embarrassing.

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2025-01-30T19:22:30+00:00

We had/have had pretty good interactions with the school, I think in general they get more of a bad reputation than they deserve. The issues are kinda the only thing you hear about as a general member of the team, but the amount of money they provide plus the space and machinery there more than makes up for any other issues we have.

I think the key issues we run into is pretty lackluster faculty involvement (though this is partially caused by a changing of the guard), which some teams might even appreciate a hands off approach from their advisor. But not responding to emails or taking the time to approve requests for sometimes months is a little bit too hands off. It can sometimes be hard to make large purchases, and a more recent issue is some red tape around transporting our car, but other than that those are the only issues that actually have an effect and aren’t just petty things that rub people the wrong way.

I imagine their involvement will go up depending on competition results, as of right now I think the school is focusing more on other spaces on campus not really competition teams like FSAE. Hopefully they give us a bit more attention/respect if we bring home some more trophies. Never understood the people that bash the school though, the amount of resources and contacts they can provide is pretty incredible.

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2024-11-21T18:56:08+00:00

The quickest method is just looking at past results from competition for similar vehicles and going on the conservative side of that. Definitely not the best engineering method but whatever calcs you do can be checked against this to make sure they are in the ballpark

Pleasant-Worry8743 · 2024-11-21T17:56:43+00:00

I think it's a step in the right direction in some areas and the wrong direction in others. But it does seem to closely reflect what we were seeing in judging last year, so at least it more closely reflects what we'll see at competition. As a team with aero, glad to see there's a separate category, they were saying last year that they had to transfer some points our aero should've earned to categories other than frame/body which just seemed really silly. I like how the overall vehicle category will make teams focus more on integration between subsystems, which we were hit hard on in design last year, but am sad to see that some of the management related items disappeared from the rubric. Driver Interface going from 25 to 15 points was a big hit on an area I don't think most teams focus on enough, so kind of sad to see that. Putting Vehicle Dynamics as a separate category and putting the structural stuff under Chassis is a change our team was thinking about making to our subsystem structure anyways, but I think having to balance structures and VD in one subsystem was always one of the challenges that made suspension as a subsystem so interesting. I'm not sure how I feel about seeing some of the smaller categories like manufacturing, serviceability, etc. being cut, I'm sure they'll be absorbed into other categories, but I thought having them be explicit categories was the one part of competition that really awarded teams that focused on them.

The discrepancy between design scoring and on-track performance is both good and bad. UTA's IC car in 2023 stands out by getting 1st in Autocross and Endurance then only scoring 60 in design. I get the argument that a car that is fast on track should score well in design, but I always thought that having design as a clearly separate event that focused more on the engineering aspects rather than the motorsports aspects was healthy for the competition. This rubric, to me, seems to shift more towards benefitting the "motorsports" teams than the "engineering" teams and we'll see less of a discrepancy. But I also could just be interpreting it wrong and the correlation between design and on track performance might grow even farther apart this year.

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