Chronicle Article!

Another article about Duke Motorsports and our 2012 year has been published! This time by Margot Tuchler from The Chronicle! Thanks Margot!!!

Click here to read the article

New Article!

We'd just like to express our thanks to Brandon Jackson who just posted a new article about Duke Motorsports and our 2012 year on the Pratt Engineering website! Here's to 2013!!

                                                            Click here to read the article

Thanks to everyone for a great year!

We officially finished competition Saturday, and we placed 12th overall, which ties our best finish ever, even against some really stiff competition this year.

I'd like to say thanks to everyone who has contributed this year - all the members of our team who put in all the time and effort to make this year happen, our alumni, our sponsors, and everyone at the university who helped us out.

At competition

We're at competition right now and done with day 1.

It's been a rough ride so far, but we're weathering the storm.  We arrived to find contents in the trailer had shifted, and war wagon had rolled back and put a dent in our car.  The car rolled back, the chainguard hit a stand, and it hit hard enough to bend the chainguard (1/8" steel) and knock the drivetrain out of place.  First thing we did was remove the drivetrain and check it over.  It seems fine, but we'll see once we're allowed to run the engine.

Our bodywork also got hit.  The nose cone got hit pretty hard, and was cracked along the front.  We worked yesterday to patch the inside and fill the outside, so we'll have to repaint it today.  We'll see how that works out.

We've almost passed tech - the tech inspectors are making us replace a tube and add another one, because they think that our rear wing loads require a 1"x0.049" tube for some reason.  I don't agree, but I'm not about to argue with the rules committee about that right now.  We've cut out what we need, notched the new tubes, and things should be getting welded back in right now.

Not an easy day, but not too terrible either all things considered.

Bodywork Photos

We went for one of the last runs before competition today. After tuning the car, we did a few endurance and accel runs. Most things are finalized, and we got a chance to check our fuel economy, which happens to be fantastic.

Here are a few pictures from today. Check out the bodywork.

And here's a comparison of the car to the CAD model:

Progress update, end of April

We're getting close to competition now, and things are moving along.  A lot of the work now is in testing and tuning, and after yesterday's trip to NCCAR, I think the suspension is pretty much set for competition.  We're also working hard on getting the bodywork done.  The molds are almost ready for the layup, so hopefully over the next week we should have bodywork finished.

 Video of Paul Harraka driving the FSAE car.  His help was invaluable in getting the suspension tuning set in a very short period of time.

Testing at Goodyear Proving Grounds

We went to Akron, Ohio to visit Goodyear's proving grounds on Saturday.  Goodyear is nice enough to host us (and other FSAE teams) at their proving grounds on a number of weekends every spring, and we chose this past weekend to visit.  Unfortunately, it was cold and raining all day, but we at least got some good engine tuning in.

Here are a few videos from this weekend:

Testing 1

Testing 2

Bowling with the car...

EAC Banquet Pictures

Last Saturday we went to the EAC Banquet. We would like to once again thank the EAC for all of the support they give us year after year. We would also like to share some pictures from the event:

John Glushik with the car and some of the team members 

Dean Tom Katsouleas with the Car

Thanks for the picture John!

Making Bodywork, Part 2

We're a few steps closer to completing our bodywork now.  All the molds are put together, and we're done with the initial sanding of two and a half of the pieces.

Our five mold pieces, slathered with epoxy/talc filler and waiting to be sanded.

Pictures and updates after the jump.

Active aero in action

Unfortunately, my phone sucks at taking video, but this is the best clip we got today of the active aero in action.


 Unfortunately, one of the radiator tabs fatigued and broke today, so we didn't get very much running time.  But I'm pleased to say the engine tune is in a much better place than a couple weeks ago and the car drives well.  It's a bit loose right now, but we'll do some more tuning once we get to Goodyear's proving grounds.

Wing angle vs position - red is full downforce, blue is minimum drag

Above is a plot of wing angle from the GPS plot.  Seems to work pretty well so far, but plenty more tuning to go.  I did realize today from looking at the data that my longitudinal accelerometer axis is reversed - oops.  If you look at the graph above, you can see this clearly (the course is clockwise) - there is less wing angle when braking before the corner and lots of wing angle accelerating out of the corner, the opposite of what should happen.