UNIVERSITY STUDENTS USE ALGOR TO SWEEP AUTOMOTIVE DESIGN AWARDS

The team from the University of Virginia used Algor software to design their Formula SAE entry.

September 29, 1994, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania -- At Formula SAE, a national automotive engineering competition, nine of the top ten Engineering Design finishers had one thing in common: They all used Algor, Inc.'s mechanical engineering software to engineer and test their designs.

Formula SAE, sponsored by the Society for Automotive Engineering, showcases the design capabilities of the brightest engineering students in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. This year, the students were challenged to design and produce a high-performance, low cost autocross vehicle which is a smaller, lighter version of a Formula One race car. SAE evaluates the cars in eight categories and in the key Engineering Design contest, Algor was the choice of virtually every top finisher.

"Algor is much more user friendly than other design software. We can quickly import AutoCAD drawings into Algor and begin analysis immediately without redoing the design as an FEA model. Other programs require the frame, which provides the structure for the suspension and the driver as well as protection for the driver, to be entered as a point-to-point representation of frame members," said Dr. Robert Woods, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, whose team placed first in the Engineering Design competition.

The criteria for the Engineering Design competition was innovation and manufacturability. The right combination of cost and performance was a major factor in beating the competition in this category.

"With the help of Algor stress and strain analysis, we reduced the cost of the vehicle by simplifying the frame. We came up with a design for the uprights, which are the parts that connect the wheel spindles to the suspension arms, that was used at all four wheels, thus eliminating the need to make a front and rear upright, ultimately reducing production costs," said Giovanni Greco, a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and member of the RPI design team.

To increase performance, the goal was to design a car that weighed as little as possible in order to achieve maximum speed and fuel efficiency. Algor helped to conceptualize different structural combinations so the students could reduce the weight of the car and still meet the stress requirements of the auto frame.

"We used Algor extensively to perform stress tests on the stiffness of the car frame. Algor helped us investigate all the different possibilities until we came up with a frame which was 30 percent stiffer than our original frame, significantly reducing the weight of the car," said Joe Kiefer, a member of the Rochester Institute of Technology team.

Seventy-eight teams from seventy colleges competed in the Formula SAE competition sponsored jointly by Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors. The highlight of the event was a 15-mile endurance and fuel economy race at the Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan.

Algor, Inc. continuously illustrates its support for student engineers by making its software easily available for colleges and universities to use in coursework and competitions such as Formula SAE.