Team photo from FSAE Michigan 2016 (my freshman year).

Introduction

At the beginning of my freshman year, I joined Formula Kentucky, the University of Kentucky’s Formula SAE team. Formula SAE (FSAE) is a collegiate competition hosted by the Society of Automative Engineers (SAE) International. During FSAE competitions, teams are awarded points based on how they present their vehicle design, cost and other aspects to competition judges. Teams then compete for a higher portion of points through dynamic events, which include skidpad, acceleration, autocross, and endurance events.

When I joined Formula Kentucky, the team was very young. FSAE teams had previously existed at the University of Kentucky (the first team at UK started around 1996), but many of these groups had failed and disbanded. In 2014, the existing team members decided to re-brand UK FSAE as Formula Kentucky, and since then, the team has been performing consistently. In 2016 (at the end of my freshman year), the team was able successfully complete its first full competition at FSAE Michigan with its first competitive car, FK01. During my sophomore and junior years, I was able to help get the team through two more consecutive years of competition. The team has now been able to complete the endurance event for three consecutive years with three different vehicles - FK01 (competed in 2016 FSAE Michigan), FK02 (competed in 2017 FSAE Michigan), and FK03 (competed in 2018 FSAE Lincoln). This was an incredible accomplishment for the team because during a typical FSAE competition, only one-third to one-half of the competing teams are able to finish the endurance event.

Bodywork of FK03 that I designed and manufactured for FSAE Lincoln 2018.

2017 - 2019: Aero/Body Lead

Near the end of my sophomore year, I transitioned into becoming the team’s Aerodynamics/Bodywork Lead. Traditionally, aerodynamics was not a critical concern for the team because reliability and low cost are the main areas of focus for young teams. When building FK02 during my sophomore year, the team was very short on manufacturing time and financials, so the aerodynamics and bodywork was largely not a priority. However, the team wanted to heavily improve its performance in design judging the following year, which allowed for a case for proper aerodynamics and bodywork to be made.

The development of the next vehicle, FK03, provided me with a clean slate for a fresh start on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations and brand-new composite bodywork. I performed various CFD simulations using ANSYS Fluid Flow CFX and developed a standardized procedure for the team to follow when investigating a given vehicle’s aerodynamic performances. When I was designing the bodywork for FK03, these CFD simulations were used to compare the aerodynamic forces of FK02 (the previous vehicle) to FK03’s conceptual designs. As the team opted to have a non-winged vehicle for FK03, the main goals of aerodynamic design were to reduce drag and lift as much as possible; analyzing the CFD simulations proved that the bodywork for FK03 was able to reduce the forces that FK02 saw.

Talking to one of the aero/body design judges at FSAE Lincoln 2018.

However, design was only half of the project - manufacturing the bodywork for FK03 provided its own unique challenges. In order to make custom carbon fiber body panels, I had to understand the fundamentals of composite manufacturing. Based on the initial design, positive molds were created by CNC routing polyurethane foam. Wet fiberglass layups were then performed on these positive molds in order to create negative molds, which were ultimately used for the final carbon-fiber/honeycomb parts. Throughout this entire process, the team and I gained a significant amount of experience with mold-making, wet layup processes, and post-layup surface treatment.

When it came time to perform during competition, FK03’s new bodywork proved itself during design judging. At FSAE Lincoln 2018, we were told by the judges that FK03 had arguably the best “non-wing package” bodywork present at the competition. This led to the team’s highest score in the aero/body category thus far. Many young teams often overlook focusing on aero, especially when it comes to gaining points for it during judging; as a result, I was happy to see my work pay off by seeing that we were on the right path for further development. However, more work needed to be done in order to prove that those simulations were meaningful.

FK03 in the middle of a coastdown test run at KY Speedway in Spring 2019.

In the 2018-2019 season, the team continued to use FK03 and refined it in order to compete in 2019 FSAE Michigan. Testing the car was also a major focus, as FK03 never got proper tuning and adjustments before the 2018 Lincoln competition. For the aerodynamic aspects of the car, this gave us a chance to do some physical testing in order to validate the simulations done when designing.

In Fall 2018, we first did some basic tuft testing to visually assess the external airflow around the car. This was a good on-boarding exercise for some of the newer members in the subsystem (we were able to recruit more members to join aero/bodywork than we previously had) and get them involved with a simple but effective test. Through tuft testing, we were able to confirm some suspected behavior of the airflow and see some new activity that we had not thought of before.

While helpful, tuft testing was only a qualitative method - we needed some quantitative backing as well. In Spring 2019, I prioritized finding a testing method that would help us establish some form of data driven comparison between our simulations and real performance. When testing at KY Speedway in Spring 2019, it presented an opportunity to conduct some coastdown tests given how much space we had available. Through this test, I was able to compare the calculated drag of FK03 to that of what was simulated in CFD; based on these tests, the “real world” drag was within 10-12% of that estimated by CFD. Given how naive and inexperienced both I and the team was headed into the development and testing of this car, these results were great validation of the preceding simulations and gave me faith that we were on the right track. At FSAE Michigan 2019, I helped present these findings and the previous work from 2018 during design judging, and once again, we did fairly well given that we were running a car with no “active” aero devices. Overall, FSAE Michgian 2019 was our best showing yet: while we unfortunately didn’t finish endurance (the car broke down with just half a lap to go), we finished 68th out of 120 teams, which was the best showing for the team thus far. I was proud to be have contributed to that result and, overall, to the team over the last few years.