Student race-car team triumphs again at Formula SAE competition

By Susan Lang

Cornell engineering undergraduates swept the track again this year at the annual, five-day International Formula SAE collegiate design and motorsports competition at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Mich. The competition ended May19.

Cornell, the defending champion, again won the overall competition, with 927 points out of a possible 1,000. The team had a 109-point lead over its nearest competitor, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and also won $8,500 in various awards. It was Cornell's seventh win since 1988.

Carroll Smith, the race-car engineering author and consultant, who has been chief judge at FSAE for more than 10 years, said to the Cornell team: "[This is] the best design review I've ever seen; the best documentation we've ever seen. [This is] the first team in the history of the competition that the design judges have not been able to ask one question you couldn't answer. We are impressed."

The SAE (for Society of Automotive Engineers) competition, regarded as the premier and largest engineering student competition in the world, pits student teams from 140 universities in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Korea, Japan and Venezuela against each other to conceive, design, fabricate and race with small, formula-style cars.

The competition includes performance, design, presentation and cost events. The students have to present their engineering design to the judges and defend their design decisions.

The Cornell team won a $3,000 prize and the SAE Foundation Cup, which is dedicated by the SAE in honor of Neil Schilke, Cornell MAE '62. Cornell students won first place in the design event, endurance race, acceleration race and skid-pad event and second place in autocross.

The Cornell team's special awards included first place and $1,250 for the EDS PLM Solutions Best Engineering Design Award, first place and $1,500 for the Governor's Coalition E85 Award, first place and $1,250 for the Visteon Powertrain Cooling System Award, $500 for the Dynojet Highest Horsepower Award, first place and $750 for the Altair Engineering Best Use of Optimization in Design Award, third place and $250 for the Robert Bosch Corp. Engine Management System Award, first place for tires in the Goodyear Best Performance Award and second place for the Hoosier Tire Autocross Award.

The Cornell team members included more than 30 students from the colleges of Engineering, Arts and Sciences, Industrial and Labor Relations, and Agriculture and Life Sciences, who designed, built and developed a new car for the competition. Student team leaders included Erich Leonard, Kenneth McEnaney and Timothy Reissman of mechanical engineering; Michael Nicolls of electrical engineering; and Diane Horey of industrial and labor relations. Albert George, the John F. Carr Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is the faculty member in charge of the design course, assisted by A. Brad Anton, associate professor of chemical engineering.

The building of an auto prototype for the competition spans both fall and spring terms at Cornell, with an emphasis on research and design in the fall and building in the spring. The Cornell project, which cost more than $20,000, was sponsored by alumni and companies including General Motors, Hunter Industries, Heller Industries and Boeing.