The Saginaw Valley State University Formula SAE team抯 2002 race car, which earned sixth place in the annual competition at the Pontiac Silverdome, included uprights (top left) and rockers (top right) in the suspension (rear shown in center) that were built after Solid Edge designs were satisfactorily validated using static stress analysis in ALGOR.

The team followed a tight production schedule because Formula SAE now requires that all cars be built from scratch each year, whereas teams prior to 2002 were permitted to use the same car for two years. Chief Engineer George Coppens said, "We were able to design and build the entire car within nine months." One way in which the team controlled its time investment was by performing FEA to verify designs of only the parts that would experience the most stress and were therefore most likely to fail: the rockers or bell cranks, the rear uprights and especially the front uprights. "The front uprights are right inside the wheels, so they see the greatest loads of any car part and it is essential that they not break," Coppens said.

Loads to represent the maximum and steady-state weight transfer were calculated after mounting accelerometers on the 2001 car and running it. The entire weight of the car was applied to the front uprights to simulate stress on the front corners when turning. Coppens said all loads were estimated high to simulate "worst-case" scenarios when racing.

This Formula SAE race car earned the Saginaw Valley State University team a sixth-place finish in the 2002 Formula SAE?/sup> Competition at the Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan.

Once load values were established and applied, team members performed linear static stress analysis on the front and rear uprights and the front and rear rockers. "When ALGOR FEA showed parts wouldn抰 fail, we immediately built them," Coppens said. Analysis simulates real-world events, so the team could tell by using the CAD and FEA tools ?without wasting time and materials for each part抯 testing ?that designs would hold up under estimated loads. In this way, the team completed a prototype race car a few weeks ahead of schedule and was able to test its real-world performance and make modifications to it as appropriate.

Regarding the advantages of participating in Formula SAE, Coppens said it provides the best way to get practical experience for university students, including the opportunity to use real-world engineering tools like Solid Edge and ALGOR software. He said, "It抯 a huge engineering project ?you抮e building a whole car, and you抮e learning how engineers really do that and using the same tools."

After this year抯 improvement to a sixth place finish from 51^st in 2001, the Saginaw Valley State University Formula SAE Team hopes to continue its climb toward first place in 2003.