• Standard Honeycomb IA

• FH Angle and Head Restraint Protection

• Tougher Monocoque Modulus and Harness

• Max 2 Accumulator Attachments Per Tube

• And more…

To manage priorities, ask four questions about every design decision, in this order: 1. Is it legal or illegal? 2. How does the change affect reliability or repeatability? 3. How does the change affect overall vehicle performance over a lap? 4. What are the drivability effects?

The most common barrier between your team and your performance goals is reliability. These design best practices are intended to help you create strong, stiff, and light mechanical designs. Every design requires tradeoffs, and this list is not intended to be a set of absolute rules; but it will help you identify common design strategies to follow, pitfalls to avoid, and will inform your design decision making.

There was one closely held secret design condition. It was secret because management would not want us to ‘overdesign’ the V12. The truth is, with clever engineering, planning for significant power increases adds very little weight and cost if you know what you are doing and if it is done up front.

Engineering is about finding the Goldilocks Solution. Cost is not separate from engineering; indeed it must go hand in hand with it. Good engineering practice goes beyond the merely technical, and encompasses knowledge of customers, supply chain, society, environmental impact etc. 

There is amazing variability in human bodies. Generally, vehicles are designed to reach from the 5th to 95th percentile, including any gender differences. But determining the measurements to use is complicated. Different countries or regions may have different ranges, and the gene interactions for any individual result in many different percentiles depending on the measurement.

The restrictor limits the amount of air an engine can use. The intake plenum smooths out the intake pulses, and makes it possible for other engines to compete with 4-cylinders. Asides on turbocharging.

Chris Warren provides some tips for what to expect and how to approach the design event.

Instead of thinking that you have to fill up X number of pages for the design report, the mentality should be “how can we fit all of our knowledge and work into these pages?”

The approach to understand what makes an engine run well is to look at the opening and closing of each valve. But whatever you want the valves to do, they’re actually doing something else, because you always have: Deflection, Inertia, and Vibration.

The very best drivers can go up to but not over the maximum lateral capability during braking and corner entry. As they smoothly come off the brakes, the lateral limit increases due to both the friction circle, and more balanced loads front/rear.

Stopwatches, garage beams, thermometers, cameras, chalk, zip ties, yarn, and smartphones.

How robust do driver controls really need to be? Never underestimate the strength of a scared driver.

Crash safety considerations beyond the frame and impact attenuator.

Ryan Kraft, former member of the #1 world ranked University of Michigan FSAE team, discusses how to set priorities for how your team defines winning and ways to pursue them.

Simply finding the combination that gives the fastest laptime is missing the point. The point is to understand the size of each effect, and how to engineer each effect to achieve the fastest laptime.

As you move through the design process, you start with insight, then gradually trade insight for accuracy.

Steps to reduce the chances of valve-piston contact or crank bearing failure. The importance of cooling and RPM limits.

Defining requirements, validating models, on-car tuning, and understanding the root cause of problems. The process of developing and troubleshooting a steering system.

This is a logic path for understanding the performance of your car in straight line acceleration. Understand the impact of gearing and power and torque curves.