In constructing their car, UD students on the Blue Hen Racing team partnered with the College of Engineering’s Center for Composite Materials in using its carbon fiber material in the car's body work. The composite helps with the car’s handling in corners. Designing the car allows students to apply what they have learned in their engineering studies. It takes lots of time, patience and resourcefulness. The team doesn't have the multimillion-dollar budget of professional Formula 1 teams. But it does have plenty of engineering power as part of the Department of Mechanical Engineering's Senior Design capstone course. Steve Timmins is the faculty instructor of that class and the advisor for the FSAE team. Timmins said the course had 15 students working in five groups aerodynamics, chassis, suspension, ergonomics and drivetrain.
project. But some students are from seemingly unrelated majors, including finance and hotel management. "You don't have to have any background or prior knowledge in cars," Nelan said. "In fact, a lot of our best people have no background in cars. If you show up, you're excited to work and have a good attitude, you're universally accepted on the team." The UD program started about 20 years ago when the FSAE was quite young, Nelan said. Nelan said the competitive element of the club had lapsed for a few years and when he joined the team in his freshman year, there was no car to race. So in his sophomore year, he and some other team members went to Lincoln to see what the competition was like. They returned eager to be part of it.
"By the end of one semester, the car completely built from scratch - was about 80 percent complete," Timmins said.
Last year, 17 students put UD back in the action and the Blue Hens finished 43rd of 100-plus teams. With a new design and new parts, Nelan said he thinks the 2018 car could finish in the top 20.
Ordinarily, Nelan said, they would cannibalize a previous model using its parts in a new design.
In recent years, 3-D printing has been an increasingly significant part of the manufacturing process.
But this year's car is a "ground-up design," Nelan said - completely reconfigured with all new parts.
"It has really enabled us to take parts you would not otherwise be able to make on a standard milling machine," Nelan said. "Our dashboard, battery box and hubcap dust shields are all 3-D printed.
"This year, Spencer [Lab] got a new CNC [computer numerical controlled] mill that allowed us to make parts a lot faster," he said. "We redesigned all the old parts. Some weren't designed correctly." This year's team is made up of undergraduate students, but the rules say graduate students can participate, so Nelan - who plans to begin work on a doctoral degree at UD next fall - could be part of future projects. He's not sure he will because of the demands a doctoral program makes, but he could if he wanted to. Many team members are engineering students, of course - and many incorporate work on this car into their senior design
“A lot of our best people have no background in cars. If you show up, you're excited to work and have a good attitude, you're universally accepted on the team.”
At Lincoln, the car will be tested in five events - acceleration, braking, skidpad (a tight figure-8), autocross (one run down a track) and endurance (a two-driver, 30-lap event). Many team members go on to work in the automotive industry, he said. He plans to work for the Department of Defense, doing research on radar and guided missile destroyers. But first, there's some racing to do.
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