MTU Car Scores in FSAE Competition
PONTIAC, MI--A team of 25
Michigan Tech University students competed in the 21st annual FormulaSAE
event held recently at the Silverdome, finishing 20th out of 108 teams
from around the world. The competition, sponsored by the Society of Automotive
Engineers, provides university students the opportunity to design, build,
test and compete with open wheel race cars. "The young men and women
on this team did a great job. They worked together all weekend to overcome
little problems and keep the car in competition," said Michael Young,
the team's faculty advisor. "Finishing every event is a significant
accomplishment in this competition, and this team deserves to be recognized
for achieving that." Fewer than 30 percent of the teams were able
to achieve this mark in the 2001 competition.
There were several highlights
for the Michigan Tech team over the weekend's activities, including a
team best 6th place finish in the design event, runner-up finish in the
Mechanical Dynamics Inc. Digital Car award and third place in the Transportation
Research Center's Safety and Crashworthiness award. According to design
engineer Eric Monteith the team takes advantage of computer simulation
technology due to the shortage of warm, dry weather in Houghton. "One
of our strategies is to leverage computer aided design and engineering
tools wherever possible in our design process," Monteith said. "The
judges from MDI were very impressed by the level of knowledge and the
degree to which we use their products."
The team added to its cache
of awards from TRC by placing in the Safety and Crashworthiness award
for the third time in four years. "When we started the design of
this car, we made a conscious effort to integrate safety features to protect
the driver, course workers and spectators," said Timm Carson, a graduate
student in Mechanical Engineering who serves as a technical specialist
on the team. "We looked at safety issues specific to this competition,
and were able to design a solution for each one we identified."
"We could have placed
higher, but a fuel pickup problem made driving the car difficult,"
Young explained. "The car was sputtering on sharp, left-hand turns
because it was starved from fuel. Our endurance event drivers Alex MacDonald
and Eric Monteith drove a very mature race to overcome this problem and
bring the car home." The positive results achieved by this year's
design give the team reason to believe that 2002 will see definite improvement,
according to Young.
Michigan Tech Racing is the
FormulaSAE team sponsored by Michigan Tech University. The team is composed
of undergraduate and graduate students from all disciplines who have a
love of motor sports and an interest in gaining practical experience to
complement their classroom education. For more information regarding the
team please see the web page http://www.me.mtu.edu/~sae
or contact Michael Young at 906.487.3357 or mfyoung@mtu.edu.
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06/05/01
