On last Friday’s lecture, the guest speaker Professor Seah talked about the process of designing and building a racing car. He gave us a short summary of the cycle of events which involved conceptualization, computer stimulation, fabrication of parts, assembly, test drive, modification and finally the competition.
Professor Seah also pointed out the reasons which make this project of building racing car challenging. Every year, the team has to conceptualize a new race car and design every component of the car. The team also needs to deal with the technical aspects such as calculating the required dimensions for optimum performance and deciding the best material to fabricate each component so as to make the racing car a success.
In addition, he also shared with us several problems the team members and he faced last year during the process. These problems included the lack of race car engineering knowledge as NUS only started this project of building racing car in 2001 and as such, was still considered a ‘greenhorn’ in the realm of race car building. The lack of motor car sports culture and racing experience in Singapore further increased the difficulty of this project.
Professor Seah and his team members also had difficulties finding a suitable venue for testing the race cars and a suitable venue for training the drivers. Sometimes, the slow delivery of materials from overseas hampered the process of building the race car and the team had no choice but to work throughout the night so as to ensure that they would still be on schedule and were ready for the competition.
Professor Seah and his team’s efforts paid off when the team eventually came in 5th in last year competition. This is the best result ever since NUS embarked on this project.
Written by: Teo Kian Siong
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In this posting, Kian Siong summarised the presentation by Professor Seah on the NUS Formula SAE team and I think that he did pretty well summarising what Professor Seah had presented.
ReplyDeleteAs Kian Siong said, Professor Seah presented some general information on the team such as the background. As Professor Seah telling the audience why is it so challenging to be in the team, I can see the enthusiasm in him which makes me want to be a part of the team but it is not that easy because according to Kian Siong, the team have to come out with a new car every year. In addition, the team also have to overcome all the technical problems when building the race car.
I agree with Kian Siong that the NUS FSAE team has to face a lot of problems during the process. The problems are divided into two categories which is problems when building the car and the problems during the competition in USA. Among the problem mentioned by Kian Siong, I think that the biggest problem is the lack of experiencein the race car building and as there is no automobile production in Singapore, things get worse.
However, with all these problems they faced, the NUS FSAE team manage to excel in the competition and according to Kian Siong, the team came in fifth in last year's competition and this pay off the team's sweats and tears.
Written by : Sara Liew Kar Mun