Formula Norh 2015
June 7, 2015
After months of design, building, testing and validation, Formula North 2015 has come and gone. The first competition for the RR15 and RR15E was a huge success, with one of our best finishes to date.
Our journey to Formula North began on Wednesday June 3rd, loading up our truck and trailer for a long journey ahead. Formula North is held in Barrie Ontario, a 5 hour drive from our home base in Ottawa and it’s also the only Formula SAE competition in Canada, so we always make a note of attending.
Our first day in Barrie brings registration, tech inspection, and reconnecting with teams we haven’t seen in almost a whole year. There are a large number of teams competing in Formula SAE but it still feels like a small community when we all get together.
With our pits set up indoors and the RR15 through its mechanical technical inspection, our first day at competition is a success.
Day two focusses on the static events of competition, although we push hard to get the cars through the rest of their dynamic technical inspections, our attention is devoted to our design, cost, and marketing events.
The Formula Student series is first and fore most an engineering competition, not a racing series. This means that our engineering design choices and justification, manufacturing choices, and ability to convey our work to competition judges is just as important as our time on the autocross course.
As a team we presented both our gas and electric cars to separate panels of judges and had a chance to share with them all the hard work and planning that went into making the RR15 and the RR15E. In each of their respective classes the RR15 and RR15E place 11th and 2nd in design.
Our two team leads, Frank Sorensen and Nadia Jorgenson also represented the teams in the marketing presentations. The Formula SAE series is based on the idea that a team is trying to bring a small autocross car to market for weekend enthusiasts. Convincing a panel of industry leaders to invest in your small student team is no small feat, and our fearless leaders did an amazing job. Placing 4th and 2nd in the combustion and electric classes respectively.
Day two also included our dynamic inspections; tilt test, noise test, and brake test. The tilt test is always a frightening experience. Seeing our pride and joy slanted 60 degrees off of the ground and waiting for the inspectors to give us a thumbs up before setting her back down again. We’ve practiced this a dozen times in the shop at home, but here it counts.
Noise test was a great sticking point for many teams in the Formula SAE series this year. Changes to the noise regulations from previous years brought our allowable noise maximum down to 110 dBC, which is much much quieter than the previous 110 dBA (decibel scales are a conversation for another day). Getting the RR15 through this inspection took a lot of creative engineering, an incredibly friendly donation from the kind people of Oakland University, and two mufflers in series.
This has been a problem for many teams this year, and has caused a lot more headaches than a quieter cars could have ever prevented. Maybe the rules will change next year, for now we have more mufflers.
Following noise, the RR15 slid through brake test with no problems and we were ready to race. A full set of tech stickers is always a beautiful thing.
Day three at Formula North gives us our first opportunity to race the clock and our competitors. In the morning we attacked the skid-pad and acceleration courses. Our acceleration time was slow, due to our small engine, but our skidpad times came in much worse than our practice laps the week before. Excessive amounts of slip in the differential and an inside rear tire that lifts off the ground in the tight skidpad corner had drained our power and increased our times.
Over the lunch break a complete disassembly of the differential to reduce the slip, and a reassembly of the suspension to mitigate our wheel lift had the car ready to go out for autocross runs.
Our autocross laps are cut short during a practice session between drivers. Our second driver identified a bad shift into third, and a grinding transmission. Sure enough a gear tooth is broken and the bottom end needs to be replaced. With this news our second rebuild of the day begins.
By midnight the bottom end of the motor has been replaced and the car is ready to run endurnace in the morning. Our autocross time with a bad transmission has granted us fifth place in the endurance line-up.
The endurance event is the most difficult event of any competiton. It combines a 22km timed race and a fuel efficiency competition, and represents 400 possible points out of our total 1000 in competition. The length of the event and strain on components means that many cars do not complete the event.
We’ve been practicing for this event since the RR15 got up and running in March, and by now the car had completed 2 complete endurance runs, and countless kilometers of testing. The RR15 performs flawlessly completing the endurance and placing second in fuel efficiency.
Our overall performance with the gas car is one of our best finishes at Formula North, placing 9th overall, we couldn’t be happier.
On the other side of the pit throughout the compeition was the RR15E. Our first all electric car was destined for competition beside the gas car in Lincoln Nebraksa two weeks after Formula North, but a surprise change in registration allowed us to bring it along in Barrie.
While the RR15 raced through the autocross and endurance courses, the RR15E raced to get to technical inspection. Serious delays with suppliers and an earlier than expected competition date meant that we were literally building the RR15E in the pits at competition.
Given the imense amount of work involved in getting a new car together and running for an event, and the limited time available even when working around the clock, the RR15E never made it on course but still did great in competition, placing second overall. A great sign of things to come for electric cars at Carleton.
