Successful UOW Formula team bound for Germany

Dec 22, 2006

UOW Formula, the University's Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) team has had another successful campaign at the recent seventh annual (F) SAE Australasian competition held in Werribee.

The team finished third behind RMIT and the University of Western Australia. This placing is the third 3rd place the team has achieved in its last three campaigns in the past 12 months.

Because of its outstanding performance at Werribee, the team has been invited to compete in Germany in August 2007.

The car designed and built for the German campaign will also be entered in the eighth Australasian competition in December 2007.

The team was formed in 2001 and since then it has produced six cars and competed in 10 campaigns, six in Australasia and four in the United States.

For the purpose of these competitions, the students assume that a manufacturing firm has engaged them to produce a prototype car for evaluation as a production item.

The intended sales market is the non-professional weekend autocross racer. Therefore, the car must have very high performance in terms of acceleration, braking and handling qualities.

The car must be low in cost, easy to maintain and reliable. In addition, the marketability of the car is enhanced by other factors such as aesthetics, comfort and use of common parts.

The manufacturing firm is planning to produce four cars a day for a limited production run and the prototype vehicle should actually cost below $50,000.

The challenge for the student team is to design and fabricate a prototype car that best meets these goals and intents. Each design is compared and judged with other competing designs to determine the best overall car.

Over the course of three days the cars are judged in a series of static and dynamic events including technical inspection, cost, presentation, engineering design, solo performance trials and high performance track endurance including fuel economy.

These events are scored to determine how well the car performs. In each event, the manufacturing firm has specified minimum acceptable performance levels.