University of Auckland FSAE Team Place 4th in Formula SAE Australia
The University of Auckland’s Formula SAE Team, placed 4th overall in the Formula SAE Australasia competition held over December in Melbourne. A significant achievement and the teams best since entering competition in 2004.
Formula SAE epitomises do-it-yourself motorsport, where student teams from Universities throughout the world conceive design, fabricate, and compete in small formula-style open wheel racing cars.
With the support of the University and numerous loyal sponsors, the team sought to not only do them proud but prove New Zealand’s next generation as leading innovators in engineering and motor sport design.
The team continued their past success in the competitions static events, placing first in the business presentation for the second year running and third in design, a fourth consecutive year in the top three. However the jewel in this years successes was the cars improved reliability in the dynamic events, a major goal of the 2011 team. This saw the car start every heat and finishing the endurance event, a grueling 30-lap test of a car’s reliability. The first time since 2007 the team has finished this race and the first since 2006 they have completed all events. Unfortunately their only endurance run was in the damp, where they achieved the best wet track time of the day, but not close enough to compete with the dry track speeds of the top teams.
Much of this success has been attributed to the teams key target development area. Redesigning and improving the crankcase with oil in mind. The successful redesign enabled a lower centre of gravity and to keep the pressure up during lateral forces thus improving its reliability.
NALCO provided free aluminium for the parts with NALCO customer PSP Engineering, a key team sponsor, donating countless machine hours to fabricate the crankcase and covers. This involved converting the teams 3D Solidworks files and machining the parts on their 4-axis lathe. A process they have thankfully automated saving manually programming over 150,000 lines.
“PSP believe in developing NZ’s innovate kiwi no. 8 wire approach to solutions and employing a number of young engineers” key reasons MD Brent Grifiths states was behind their sponsorship of the 2011 team.
For more information about Formula SAE please visit www.fsae.co.nz.
For more information about PSP Engineering please visit pspengineering.co.nz.
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