Automotive Product Development



Automotive Product Development

Introduction

Formula SAE is a student design competition organized by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE, also known as SAE International). The competition was started back in 1978 and was originally called SAE Mini Indy (Woods, 1996).

The concept behind Formula SAE is that a fictional manufacturing company has contracted a student design team to develop a small Formula-style race car. The prototype race car is to be evaluated for its potential as a production item. The target marketing group for the race car is the non-professional weekend autocross racer. Each student team designs, builds and tests a prototype based on a series of rules, whose purpose is both ensuring on-track safety (the cars are driven by the students themselves) and promoting clever problem solving.

Formula SAE has relatively few performance restrictions. The team must be made up entirely of active college students (including drivers) which places obvious restrictions on available work hours, skill sets, experience, and presents unique challenges that professional race teams do not face with a paid, skilled staff. This restriction means that the rest of the regulations can be much less restrictive than most professional series (Case, 1995).

Students are allowed to receive advice and criticism from professional engineers or faculty, but all of the car design must be done by the students themselves. Students are also solely responsible for fundraising, though most successful teams are based on curricular programs and have university-sponsored budgets. Additionally, the points system is organized so that multiple strategies can lead to success. This leads to a great variety among cars, which is a rarity in the world of motorsports (Woods, 1996).

FSAE rules related to system and subsystem

For the purpose of the Formula SAE competition, teams are to assume that they work for a design firm that is designing, fabricating, testing and demonstrating a prototype vehicle for the nonprofessional, weekend, competition market (Degarmo, 2003).

The vehicle should have very high performance in terms of acceleration, braking and handling and be sufficiently durable to successfully complete all the events described in the Formula SAE Rules and held at the Formula SAE competitions.

The vehicle must accommodate drivers whose stature ranges from 5th percentile female to 95th percentile male and must satisfy the requirements of the Formula SAE Rules. Additional design factors to be considered include: aesthetics, cost, ergonomics, maintainability, manufacturability, and reliability (Case, 1995).

Once the vehicle has been completed and tested, your design firm will attempt to “sell” the design to a “corporation” that is considering the production of a competition vehicle. The challenge to the design team is to develop a prototype car that best meets the FSAE vehicle design goals and which can be profitably marketed.

Technical dimensions

The engine must be a four-stroke, Otto-cycle piston engine with a displacement no greater than 610cc. An air restrictor of circular cross-section must be fitted downstream of the throttle and upstream of any compressor, no greater than 20mm for gasoline engines or 19mm for ethanol-fueled engines. The restrictor keeps power levels below 100 hp in ...