06/17-06/20 This year I had the privilege of being one of the design judges at Formula SAE West. This was particularly interesting to me since I have gone through much of the same process that the teams had to undertake. The preliminary and semi-final design judging took place prior to the dynamic events so in a very real way the teams' and their cars' performance on the track was a reality check of our judging. Gratifyingly, the teams we picked for the finals - Oregon State and RIT - both did extremely well with RIT taking first in autcross and OSU taking first in fuel economy and combined economy/endurance. The OSU car is impressively light at a mere 307 lbs.

I spent most of the time Thursday and Saturday judging and didn't get a chance to take pictures - the only snapshots I have are from the autocross event on Friday.

There were some fairly innovative mechanical solutions and a number of the cars were really well done. The teams who chose to implement aero generally went with triple-element wings...

With the exception of RIT who had no wings but a really well thought-out undertray of which I don't have a picture. RIT was also the fastest in autocross - coincidence? Hard to say. There are lots of factors that go into a fast A/X time, driver being not the least of them. At the very least I was impressed with their analysis and design process.

Despite the cosmetic variety and a vast array of different subsystem designs, all the cars generally had a fairly conventional RWD mid-engine layout with a motorcycle engine of some sort sitting directly behind the driver. I was hoping to see some more creative approaches but I guess I'm biased that way :)

Going into the event I was questioning the continued need for intake restrictors - with a maximum attainable power of around 80 hp the more powerful cars seem to be traction-limited anyway. After some discussions with the powertrain judges I now understand the reasons. First, it prevents teams from just plunking a stock engine in the chassis and forces them do the research and the analysis, development and fabrication of quite a number of powertrain components. Turns out it is possible to achieve choked flow (sonic velocity) in the restrictor, which was a surprise to me, and a pretty thorough understanding of gas flow is necessary to make it and the rest of the powertrain work well. Interesting.

Another surprise was that despite a very high overall level of technical knowledge demonstrated by the two finalist teams, neither of the frame designers had an understanding of how the front suspension is actually loaded under braking and that the brake torque is additive to longitudinal force on the lower arm. In the case of OSU this cost them a broken suspension in the braking event and was a very significant factor in them coming in second in design to RIT. They also ended up second overall with RIT taking the win and Kansas (another very well done car, the yellow one in the pictures above) coming in third.

Overal quite an educational experience for me. I couldn't help but think about how my own designs would fare if judged by the same criteria and I have to admit that I might have lost a few points here and there... Something to consider as I move forward. Would have done OK on innovation, so at least there's that :)