School is this daily drudgery that otherwise interrupts that all-important social life during your youth. And institutes of higher education--universities and colleges--make it even worse, with unrelenting workloads and stressful exam periods.
But there are some things about school that make it fun. They're called "extra curricular activities." Sure, you've got your chess clubs and year book committee, but we said "fun," and this is a gearhead magazine. Imagine designing, building and racing a formula-style racecar as part of a school project. Now we're talking.
Every year since 1986, the Society of Automotive Engineers (the "SAE" on your motor oil) has held a "Formula SAE" student engineering competition, where engineering students from all over the world converge in Pontiac, MI to put their best designs to the test.
This isn't just some K-Mart parking lot autocross day for the locals. This competition has become so big, that SAE had to limit entries to 140 teams. For the 2003 competition, 140 schools from all over the world pre-entered, and on race day, over 120 teams showed up and took to the track, in the monstrous parking lot of the Pontiac SilverDome. With Ford, General Motors and Daimler-Chrysler all major sponsors of this yearly event, this is the big time. In fact, many engineering students get hired by the Big Three, right from this competition.
The goal of the competition is for SAE student members to conceive, design, fabricate, and of course, compete with small formula-style racing cars. Start with a simple set of rules, a blank sheet of paper (well, really a blank computer screen now), a bunch of imagination, the engineering theories that you didn't forget right after that final exam, and go to it. The end result is a great experience for engineering students to work on a real prototype in a team environment, just like what awaits them in the real engineering world after graduation. And more importantly, it shows the students that while everything might fit together and work on paper, it's often a totally different story when the parts are actually made.
The concept for the competition is interesting: the engineering students are to approach the project as though a manufacturing firm has asked them to produce a prototype car for evaluation as a later production item. The "production car" is intended for weekend warrior autocross-type racers, so it needs to have very high performance, but must also be low in cost, easy to maintain, and reliable (yeah I know, you can't have them all in race car, but therein lies part of the challenge). Each team design is compared and judged with other competing designs to determine the best overall car.
The rules for the car itself have evolved slightly over the years, but the basics have remained the same: The car must have working suspension, with a minimum travel in each direction, brakes on all four wheels, and a whole lot of structural and safety requirements. A maximum 610cc four-stroke piston engine is allowed, running on gasoline, or an E85 ethanol-gasoline blend. In order to limit the power to responsible levels for rookie student drivers, all the engine intake air must be drawn through a single throttle valve, and a 20mm intake restrictor (19 mm for the E85 fuel)--basically the size of your thumb. NASCAR has nothing on the SAE restrictor plates, but even with the small air holes, teams were registering almost 80 rear-wheel horsepower on the Dynojet set up at the competition. Combine that with a vehicle weight of around 450 pounds for the better teams, and it makes for some impressive performance.
Since most of the engines typically come from motorcycle applications (with a carburetor for each cylinder) a completely new intake manifold is required to meet the rules. The OEM carburetors are usually thrown in the trash, replaced with custom tuned EFI systems. Superchargers and turbochargers are allowed (as long as it's a student designed installation and not OEM on the engine) but any compressor must still suck its air through the intake restrictor first, so the supercharging effect is still limited.
Wings, spoilers and ground effects are also allowed, within some limits.
Each team is judged through both static and dynamic events. Of course the dynamic events are where most of the fun is, but being an engineering competition, the static events are crucial towards the engineering education, and therefore carry a significant part of the total available points.
Static events include the all-important design, manufacturing and costing presentations and reports, a marketing presentation, plus the technical inspection of the actual vehicle (which ensures compliance with the rules, and all necessary safety requirements). Part of the technical inspection requirements are braking and noise tests. Dynamic events include acceleration, skidpad, autocross, and endurance/fuel economy test events.
At the end of the 4-day competition for 2003, it was the team from the University of Wollongong (Australia) that collected the most points, and were therefore the overall winner. The top 10 teams for 2003 were:
1. University of Wollongong
2. University of Missouri - Columbia
3. Michigan State University
4. Georgia Institute of Technology
5. Auburn University
6. Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
7. University of Minnesota - Minneapolis
8. North Carolina State University - Raleigh
9. Cornell University
10. California State University - Northridge
Individual event winners were:
Cost:
Michigan State University
Presentation:
University of Washington
Design:
University of Wollongong
Acceleration:
Ohio State University
Skid Pad:
University of Wisconsin - Madison
Autocross:
University of Missouri - Columbia
Endurance/Fuel Economy:
University of Wollongong
Students all agreed that this competition was the best part of their engineering educations. If the 2003 Formula SAE competition is any indication, it looks like the future of production-based performance car engineering is in good hands.
Part of the tech inspection is a tilt table test, which checks for fluid leaks under lateral accelerations. Here we see the University of Manitoba entry passing the tilt table test. | 
Everything always works on paper, right? Well, in the real world, breakage happens. GM graciously provided their Powertrain Group Prototype shop and personnel to support the competition to help fix anything that could be fixed, like this broken front control arm. | |