CU team prepares for Formula SAE competition

Robert Barker/University Photography Formula SAE team members put this year's race car through its paces in February on a course set up in the B parking lot next to Judd Falls Road.

By Susan Lang

It takes more than 150 working hours each day by a 30-student team, day in and day out during the fall and spring semesters, plus all the creativity and hard work the students can muster to design and build a single-seat, formula-style, open-wheel race car. For Cornell's stellar team, the goal is competing at the annual international Formula SAE collegiate design competition in Pontiac, Mich., May 15 to 19.

Sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), this premier engineering education event attracts student-designed cars from more than 125 universities around the world to compete in three categories: static inspection and engineering design, solo performance trials, and high-performance track endurance.

The team from Cornell, current world champion and six-time winner since 1988, has been hard at work since this past fall on the 2002 race car. Its special features include compactness, custom-made dampers, a shorter wheelbase of 66 inches, improved ergonomics and new traction control, fuel injection and electronic throttle control systems. (The term "formula" relates to specifications for size, weight and engine displacement.)

Cornell's car this year is100 inches (8-feet, 4-inches) long, weighs some 500 pounds (fluids included) and can go from 0 to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds. The Formula SAE competition gives the Cornell team a chance to showcase its design and performance, particularly during endurance and skidpad events.

"Each car, from year to year, is unique in that the project is not simply fixing up last year's design. Rather, we have to think outside of the box every year for the new car and try new designs and ways of improving the performance and handling of the previous car," said Diane Horey, a senior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, who is on the team for the first time.

Horey, who puts in an average of about 40 hours a week on the project, is one of the few non-engineering students on the team. She works primarily on the business end of the project, helping to secure sponsorships and raise more than $50,000 to buy specialized tools and parts. The team has more than four dozen corporate and alumni sponsors, including General Motors, Hunter Industries and Heller Industries.

Students get three credits each semester for working on the Formula SAE team. They typically put in at least 20 hours a week to earn their credits as a design project under the direction of the team's faculty adviser, Albert R. George, the J.F. Carr Professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of Cornell's Systems Engineering Program. Many students, however, put in up to 60 hours a week, especially as the five-day competition grows closer.

Currently, the team is conducting "drive offs" in the B parking lot near the College of Veterinary Medicine to identify the best eight drivers, two for each event, autocross, endurance, skidpad and acceleration.

"This is definitely the best way to learn engineering at Cornell," said Erich Leonard, a mechanical engineering senior from Watertown, N.Y., who is on the Formula SAE team for the third year in a row. As the chassis team leader, Leonard said he puts in from 35 to 40 hours a week. "We get to apply everything we learned from two and three years ago and then continue learning as we apply it. That will definitely help us in the real world after we graduate."