Auto-design team to compete in Michigan
May 12, 2010
STARKVILLE, Miss. – While other students hit the educational brakes to enjoy some summer fun, a group of Mississippi State engineers prepares to put the pedal to the metal as it tests its custom-built formula-one style race car against international competitors.
MSU’s team will compete in the Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (FSAE) Collegiate Design Series event at the Michigan International Speedway May 12-15. There, the team’s vehicle will be tested against 121 other schools’ entries in various design, performance and cost events.
The team’s suspension leader, Dash Robinson, explained that the premise of the competition is for each team to operate as an auto-manufacturer tasked with designing a formula-one style prototype car.
“You have to build a car that is lightweight, reliable, quick, agile, comfortable, and cheap,” the junior mechanical engineering major said. “The objective is to create the prototype and determine what it would costs to build and sell 3,000 cars a year.”
The team began working on this year’s entry in June 2009. In a little less than a year, the engineers were able to design and model their vehicle, build it, complete classes, and still have time to do pre-competition tests and tweaks to improve their vehicle’s performance.
“We started by creating a 3-D model of our chassis and suspension,” explained chief engineer Ryan Poe. “From there we worked our way up, running simulations, testing our capabilities and building our car.”
The senior mechanical engineering major added, ”These last few weeks we have been able to get some test data under our belts. We haven’t had any catastrophic failures, but we did identified a few things that might give us trouble at competition, so we’ve been putting the finishing touches on things.”
This will be only the fifth time Mississippi State has entered the 31-year-old competition, and only the second time the university’s team has completed the design and construction of the car in one year.
Last years entry finished in the middle of the pack among stiff competition. Upon returning to Starkville, team members saw potential for improvement. They believe that this year’s entry will reflect what they learned.
“Our 2009 car was good, and going to competition we learned how to better evaluate our vehicle. Just a few post-competition tweaks immediately improved its performance,” explained Poe. “This year’s car is lighter, faster and hopefully will be the best car MSU has ever entered into the competition.”
The 2010 FSAE-Michigan competition features 122 teams from more than 10 countries including automotive engineering powerhouses from Germany and Austria.