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When the verdict had been settled at Formula Student Germany, the University of Karlsruhe from Germany took the overall crown, and with an ICE from Stuttgart winning the British Formula Student event, it goes to show how advanced, and efficient this engineering event is. With the Germans taking the big two. And while we see new technical approaches each year, this year had to be the biggest step in terms of different technology on display.
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| Pic: Stefan Ruitenberg |
Up and down the field, with all sorts of budgets, there are many concepts used by the teams, who are always very talkative that they have the best car, while the team next door thinks they do. The competition is great, the teams are all so friendly, and willing each other on, as did Oxford Brooks to Bath in the endurance test on social media.
The purpose of this feature is to look at the technical advancements of 2016, with many great ideas on display. Even some of the outfits with smaller budgets managed to be innovative with their cars. Let’s take a look at what’s what.
The Aachen RWTH was a car that took my eye due to the neat approaches the team had taken. The first being the front suspension, which reminded me of Formula 1. The design uses push rods to the uprights, where the team has mounted hub motors, which are from AMK. The team has mounted its heave springs on top of the chassis, where a small vanity panel covers them. Bell cranks join the pull rod to the heave elements and dampers, making it coil over dampers. They also use an anti-roll too.
Where the Aachen car differs is that most teams mount the suspension system on top of the bodywork, but the Aachen car has mounted it lower and have a bespoke panel to cover it, thus giving better aero, something that Aachen mechanical engineering student and a close friend, Andreas Kociok very happy.
But when you look at their FS car, quality really shines through, with some other neat ideas. The rear wing sees long, swooping end plates which are bolted directly onto the rear tub. Where they are bolted, it is a hollow section, as the team has a neat set up for its battery. The car has a big slot where the battery is placed in, which is right at the back of the car. The team has also incorporated the diffuser and cooling fans into the design, of which saw fellow teams bowing down too.
"Aerodynamics are a great way to pull out performance, the aero race has become even hotter this year" Andreas Kociok (Aachen mechanical engineering student)
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| Pic: Stefan Ruitenberg |
Another team that stood out was Australian Monash team, who by far showed up with the most advanced suspension system in FS. The design in question was a front to the rear interconnected system, which saw hydraulic links going to a pair of actuators under the space frame chassis, as you can see. This design was used in Formula 1 up until 2014 German Grand Prix, where it was outlawed.
The design was first developed in 2015 by students, but for full optimisation, the team opted not to use it on its 2015 car. The design was adopted, and modified to work even better, and worked to full effect on its 2016 FS car.
The idea behind it is that it can isolate each type of chassis movement, that’s: roll, pitch, heave, warp and hump motions. The system has a much greater control on these and is able to keep the wheels, and chassis more level for optimum tyre grip and aerodynamic downforce. By using the space frame chassis, the team is able to keep bits simple, and bits advanced, i.e. the suspension system.
Some other teams that excelled in the suspension sector are both the cars from Stuttgart University. Its Rennteam, and Greenteam who both had a system that the FS paddock was amazed by. The interesting thing here is that the ICE powered car from Rennteam won the UK FS event, while Greenteam played quite well overall too. So with two cars from the University, they had to be in with a chance of doing well in the contesting events.
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| Pic: Stefan Ruitenberg |
Starting off at Rennteam, the rear suspension concept consisted of three elements, two for pure wheel and chassis movements, and one element, the top mounted one, was used for the aerodynamic load. The design proved quite effective and was able to propel them to the top place on the podium in FS UK.
For Greenteam, the front suspension is where that car really shined through. The car has a coil over damper with two extra elements to absorb yet more motion. I also liked the design on Hamburg’s car, which had two heave springs going down to push rods. Where the designs differ, is that they have novel anti-roll bars, which are able to be adjusted to present understeer or oversteer, thus being able to be adapted to the driver's driving style. Both teams were able to control both heave, pitch and roll to create cars which have astounding front tyre grip.
But for the rear suspension, it remained quite still in 2016, apart from the top University’s from Germany, who really pushed the boat out. For the Dutch-based Delft team, the defending champions ran pushrod with vertically slanted springs and dampers. But the way this was joined to the back of the chassis was in a neat manner.
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| Pic: Stefan Ruitenberg |
Another Team that had neat rear suspension was the University of Paderborn, who ran an ICE at the rear. And like Rennteam Stuttgart they showed rear suspension on ICE cars is still just as good as a car with hub motors, even with bigger engines. The design is push rod but has horizontally laid out springs and dampers. Even with an ICE powertrain, the University was still able to package its suspension system in the way they wanted it to.
While hub motors are the way forward for a lot of teams, one team went one step forward and made a design which reduces unsprung mass, as well as improve the centre of gravity. The team in question was Germany FS winners, Karlsruhe, who was able to engineer a powertrain installation concept completely new to FS.
While the team may have used motors, they were self-developed by the University and mounted the motors under the chassis. This design means you have less unsprung weight on the front and rear suspension, in each corner, thus making the car more agile and dynamic.
This design had many rival teams applauding their effort, as the car not only drove well in Germany but the UK too, where they came in at 2nd place. The students and University showed that they are very capable of pushing the boundaries of design, and a design which automotive manufacturers will be looking closely out.
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| Pic: Stefan Ruitenberg |
"Teams are now spending more than ever, going quicker than ever, the engineering is better than ever. It's a tasty visit!" Andrea Quintarelli (Ford suspension engineer)
Another top performing team in Formula Student is 2010 winners TU Munich from Germany, the team showed up with the most advanced aerodynamic package in FS history the paddock says. The team worked many hours in CFD to create a very advanced package, that not only produced a huge amount of downforce, it was not compromising any of the cooling system the car uses - an unfriendly challenge to any Motorsport design engineer.
The design really differs in all areas of the car, that’s the front wing, side wings and rear wings. With the front wing, you can see these elements that stick above the normal flaps of the wing. The design sits in between the tub, and the two front wheels, and is a section where teams have the freedom to explore.
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| Pic: Stefan Ruitenberg |
The reason TU Munich was able to apply wings here, is that they moved the cooling system right to the very back of the car, behind the ICE engine. Most teams have side pod cooling, with a small intercooler mounted there, but as this was not here on the Munich car, they had free space to develop. So the team was able to apply big wings to produce even more downforce.
This approach has not been done before, and with some clever thinking, and a move to the cooling system, the team was able to gain even more downforce. With the front wing, they were able to draw more downforce, as the wing they designed would block air to the coolers, but that would be the case if the car had a conventional cooling layout.
For the rear wing, the car saw an array of Formula 1 style louvres to help reduce the drag of the wing, a design also new to FS. So for me, the TU Munich team gains the award for the best aerodynamic package, and a design which was mostly covered by the team members of the University. I can see why they didn’t want people to latch onto its designs, but Formula Student has no place for this, that’s more Formula style.
This brings me onto front wings, which are getting quite advanced in the number of elements teams are applying. There was one neat trick used by both Delft and Monash though. They had a pair of arms which went from the suspension to the front wing, with a pair of bell cranks on the way.
This system was a way to maintain front wing ride height, so when the car corners, there is suspension compression under braking, and the arms would stop the front wing from being too closer to the ground, if not scrapping it. Watch out for this design in the future I say.
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| Pic: Stefan Ruitenberg |
Looking at the teams with smaller budgets, innovation was still able to shine through, and this was evident at the Imperial College from the UK. The London-based University had in fact designed and manufactured its own battery pack from scratch. But the more interesting feature is that the team had self-developed its own electronic control box, deemed the ‘E-Box’, as you can see in my image above.
This quite innovative electrical engineering was from the world of which craft and was a big shame the car never ran to its full potential. The car had minimal running which was down to the E-Box. But where credit was due, this was some astonishing engineering in use here.
The same could be said for Liverpool, who designed some neat bodywork, in which made it look like a mini Formula 1 racer to me. The elegant body had the front wing, nose cone and side pods all blended into each other, which portrayed a very elegant and classy style, one which also worked aerodynamically they told me. If there was an award for the best looking car, Liverpool would have been up there.
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| Pic: Stefan Ruitenberg |
I also applaud the efforts from Modena University, shown above, from Italy too, as the team have a longitudinally mounted 4-cylinder engine, the concept promotes easy access to both sides of the engine vs the traditional transverse layout, yet amazingly it was no longer than a transverse car due to the very neat final drive packaging the team acquired.
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