Pros And Cons Of Formula SAE

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 ABOUT THE CAR

A Formula Student car is an opened wheeled race-car designed and fabricated by university level students to compete at global level against other universities. The students involved in such projects conceptualize, design, fabricate, test and race a single seated, open-wheel Formula Style race car. The design of such a car aims at enhancing dynamic performance while maintaining the safety and following the guidelines lay down by the governing body.

1.2 ABOUT THE COMPETITION

Formula SAE® is a student design competition organized by SAE International (formerly Society of Automotive Engineers). The first competition was started back in 1979. The concept behind Formula SAE is that a fictional manufacturing

But it is not actually a single piece structure, but is made by welding several parts together. Advantages are that automation can be easily done, making it feasible for mass production. Since a large amount of metal is used in the construction, a Crumple-zone can be incorporated into the design. Disadvantages include its weight, due to the large amount of metal used.
Space-Frame and a Monocoque are suitable for the current application. The behaviour of each configuration is as follows:

 Space frames must have all the major loads applied onto them directly upon stiff nodes, which are to be triangulated as explained above. This ensures that all the supporting members are subjected to either tension or compression and do not undergo bending. This is a critical requirement, as structures tend to undergo failure due to bending at much lower loading conditions in comparison tension or compression.
 Monocoque employ a significantly different approach to load bearing and transmitting. They have stressed skins, where any force is dissipated all over the skin in the immediate surroundings of the point of application. But this requires the skin to be fairly continuous, adding a lot of excessive material and also complicating the design of