Structure and Design...Till now

Designing The Chassis: The complete model was designed according to our requirements and the competition rules.

The Wooden Prototype: This was made to 

1.Test the rules 

2.See how comfortable the driver feels and design the seat accordingly.

3.Fix the engine position.

Making The Chassis: The main hoop and front hoop bending was done by a CNC machine.The rods were fixed in their position with clamps and were accurately grinded and weld. 

 Making The Seat Mould: A mock-up chassis was made, the wooden seat was placed in the centre.

Laying Plaster of Paris on the mould: The Plaster was allowed to dry. After pulling out the mould we applied resin and fibre-glass to make the seat.

The Seat with the Chassis: The surface of the seat was made smooth by sand-paper and then the seat was inserted into the main chassis.

Moving on.....to Delhi!!

Now that the chassis is complete, it is time to shift the gear and that means Delhi. Time to go shopping. Almost everyone in the team will be leaving to Delhi early tomorrow morning to get something to tinker with in our workshop.

To bring you up to date, we have completed our chassis, we got an engine and a differential quite a while ago, we have submitted our Business Logic Plan(BLP) for registering into Formula Student UK and we are awaiting the results on Feb 1st!!

We have also made our very own seat all by ourselves in our workshop. It took about a week but it was a very good learning experience.

Of course, there is a whole lot of design work that we have been continuously doing, but those were the bullet points.

Moving on to sponsorship updates, we have finally got support from our institute in the form of monetary help and also we have got a sponsorship from MAG India. So we are just about getting enough fuel to propel ourselves, but we still have a long way to go, so hope we get more and more sponsorships.

That is all in this post, will return with a longer one after the Delhi trip.

VIRTUAL SUPRA - Design Scrutiny - A Look Back

Just completing a draft dating back to Aug 2010 for the sake of documentation( of the return journey! ) 


After a series of delays and shocks , VIRTUAL Supra was ironically the first REAL thing of the competition.Teams were asked to submit their preliminary design reports before 16th august to the convener. All teams had to submit a declaration form that they will be using the given Maruti Suzuki Engine. 
           The preliminary design report should be 7 pages and should contain all three views of the vehicle.After submitting the PDR(Preliminary design report , we are eligible to attend VIRTUAL SUPRA. 
          Virtual Supra was held on 21st and 22nd of August 2010 in ANSYS  Office , Pune. All the teams were supposed to give a 10 min presentation which would be followed by question bombs.The 'screw'tinzing is done by a panel of judges who are veterans in the automobile industry.

  Only 5 are allowed to give the present during this event, so five of us from Inspired Karters Racing, Kartik Bagga, Rishi Bigghe, Shubham Dixit , Rohit Garg and myself packed our bags and headed to Pune. Our presentation was half done and remaining was in bits and pieces. As we stepped into the so called deluxe bus to Jaipur we could feel the tension of the competition. After indulging ourselves with sweets in Jaipur we boarded the train to amchi Mumbai . The train was awesome , furnished with new seats and curtains. Everything can't go well, can it? The power plugs were not working and that was enough for us to postpone our pending work. We slept well that night, something that would become a luxury few days later.As we neared Mumbai , good food (read pav bhaji) was the only thing in our minds. Finally we reached Mumbai and immediately took a local to dadar and then boarded a bus to Pune. The only highlight of the journey being Shubham aka Baba and Rishi laughing hysterically at Bhagam Bhag's PJs and everyone else in the bus smiling at them. After reaching Pune we walked down to Aundh Retreat. The rooms were great and everything felt like home


.Work started soon and we also had Kadvekar also gave a guest visit to our hotel and took us to a good restaurant. After sipping Cad b we were back in our hotel working on our  the presentation , trying to 'crack' Vinay's CFD analysis and making the MS project plan and all this continued till 4 in the morning. 

          We got up early in the morning and we were the first team to reach ANSYS office. The inaug was late and everything else was also late and we finally got our slot at 1 and we were allotted judge panel 1 and we entered the room with confidence( partly because the screwing judges were in panel 2). Bagga started off with the presentation quickly and before we could settle down , the question started raining. They were on braking and CFD .


The judge " What the equations you have considered? "
All of us were confused. Before we could think of some random equations the judge continued.
" Haven't you studied the basic equations?"
Baba with an embarrassed and confused look quickly went towards the board. We were explaining how we calculated the braking distance and then came the realization when the judge asked " How did you get that? What equations did you use?" Suddenly all of us knew what it was. Baba wrote the three equations on the board like a primary school teacher. The screwing did not stop there . We were again stuck when we presented our CFD analysis. 


"What kind of flow have you considered?"
 "ummm ...Laminar"
The person who was asking was from ANSYS and had probably done several years of CFD. We knew not to mess with him.
"The flow around the car will be turbulent. Why have you considered laminar ?"
" Sir... for a preliminary analysis we have considered laminar.. we will be doing further analysis"
He was not going to stop at that . "What is the equation for Reynolds Number?" Baba was already positioned at the blackboard . But his TP knowledge was only enough to get the numerator of the relation. " So Reynolds number doesn't depend on viscosity?" he questioned and then came the denominator. 


The rest of the presentation went smoothly with a few basic rulebook questions here and there. We  left ANSYS happy and with a sense of achievement. It was one of the smoothest presentations of Karters history.  

If you are thinking that we had happy ending , then let me tell what happened next. Our tatkal tickets for the return journey were in waiting list. Hoping that we would get atleast one seat , we packed our bags and headed to the station. 20 minutes to departure and we were still stuck in waiting list. We had to take waiting list tickets in sleeper class. The waiting list numbers were in the 500s and we dumped our asses into the crowded sleeper compartment. All I can remember from then on is getting squeezed ,stamped, pushed, pulled ,twisted and getting thrown around all over the compartment.Thanks to the 50 odd middle aged annoying women who were in the compartment, this was the last smiling pic we had in the journey.

We were left standing for the night. Bigghe and I were guarding the laptops while Baba and Tidda took care of the luggage. Bagga happily slept on the floor with his Ipod left to be taken by anyone. He was lucky that Bigghe spotted it first. Bigghe went on to fight with one of the women for the seat. I don't exactly remember what he uttered but it was damn funny. 

 Even after getting settled in  the  top berths during the day , the journey still had some entertainment left for us. This particular book caught Tidda's attention. 


  We reached back safely in one piece. Looking back now , it was definitely a trip to remember. 
























 "Nothing behind you matters." - Enzo Ferrari( and Bigghe as he made his way in the train)

Pit stop

It has been almost two months into our long pit-stop and the flow of work has understandably reduced. In the meantime SUPRASAE has announced a few radical changes in the rules(We expected it,didn't we?). The new rule book was uploaded a few weeks back (http://suprasaeindia.org/downloads_rule_book.asp) and here are the notable changes:

1) The maximum displacement of the engine has been increased to 810 cc (Obviously to include the Maruti 800 engine). This move has sent ripples across the SUPRASAE community(will discuss more about it later). 

2) There is a separate clause 4.3.2.2 introduced for teams using a engine with displacement more than 625cc , which says that the minimum OD of all tubing should be 25mm and wall thickness should be at least 2mm. It also introduces a new bracing from the top of the bear rearwards at a max angle of 60degrees.

3) The new rules make it compulsory for teams using engine with displacement more than 625cc to compulsorily use seamless tubes for all tubing purposes.

Other than this there are no major changes found till now(Other than replacing FSAE with the sucky SUPRASAE everywhere)

The rule book also says that the Preliminary Design report submission date is 7th Aug 2010 ( In Rishi's words : Ass on fire !!)

The Design Report scrutiny is scheduled to be from 13th to 15th Aug 2010. 


Its time for the team to start serious work again. Performing well in PDR and scrutiny will definitely give us the confidence boost.

"To finish first, you must first finish."

- Rick Mears

 

#No more Pit stops.Period.


PS: A detailed report on "Our teams progress so far in all sub-systems and the way forward" coming soon.

FSAE Prototype redesign

After working on the shortcomings of the initial design , the entire prototype chassis was broken down [ :'( ] and the new design was made reusing the same pipes on 8th May 2010.

The areas extensively worked on were :

1) The front bulkhead
2) The roll hoops

The front bulkhead was extensively modified to make it more compact and to blend it along with the sloping of the  nosecone. An extra support attachment was also added to the main hoop.

In all the rebuilding process was a success and the chassis looked more compact. The few places where we will be working on are the front hoop area and the main hoop area.

The front hoop looked very much raised initially but after cutting down 2 inches , it turned back normal.Discussions were held on tilting the front bulkhead at an angle of around 10 degrees to increase the cockpit area and to assist steering.

The top view of the new chassis.

Inspired Karters in full throttle.

Rishi Bigghe's  macbook with the design.











After successfully building the new chassis the team members are now ready to master their subsystems and come back after the holidays for more 'FSAE adrenaline'.

FSAE .. You just can't get enough of it.

The next update will be on individual subsystems' progress.

Cheers !