16
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY JUNE 24, 2009
SCIENCE
Student engineers pilot racecar to third place
-1
BY JASON BAKER
jbaker@kansan.com
The University's Society of Automotive Engineers club took third place over the weekend at the Formula SAE California competition in Fontana, Calif.
A KU student drives the JMS-90, a racecar designed by the University's Society of Automotive Engineers club. The car earned the club third place in the Formula SAE California competition.
The SAE competed against more than 60 universities from across the country as well as from Asia and Europe in a competition that included designing, selling and racing its racecar, the JMS-90.
"It's a lot of hard work," said Robert Sorem, associate professor of engineering and faculty adviser for the group. "It takes about 20 students, between 60-100 hours a week and a lot of all-nighters."
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Matt Petty, Chanhassen, Minn., senior and team captain, said it was a 10-month process to get the vehicle ready to compete.
"It started in August with a blank sheet of paper." Petty said.
Petty said the team set an April 1 deadline to test the car for the first
time. He said that the SAE club had been competing in Formula SAE events since 1994 and that more universities had participated in recent years.
In the three-day competition, SAE competed in a static event, in which it had to justify its designs in front of a panel of judges. The University's SAE team took third in that event.
A sales competition required team members to conduct a mock sales pitch of their car. Petty said that if the team's car were to be mass produced, it would sell for $20,000, but that the cost of building the car was somewhere between $50,000 and $70,000. In order to build the car, Sorem said, SAE used funding from Student Senate, the School of Engineering and alumni donations.
event also included an endurance portion, in which a team member drove the car around the speedway 11 times.
SAE took 13th in the sales competition, which Petty said gave the team enough points to take third going into the auto-cross event. Cars in this event were tested to see which could complete one lap of the speedway in the shortest amount of time. The
SAE put up the second fastest time of 62.78 seconds and Petty said the car went from zero to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds.
"We were very happy; it showed how fast our car can be." Petty said.
With their second place finish in the auto-cross and endurance competitions, the team had enough points to finish third overall behind Oregon State University, which took second, and the Rochester Institute of Technology, which took first place.
Petty said the team received a trophy and $1,000. Petty also said Sorem won the Mentor Cup for his contributions to the SAE program since 2000.
"It was a big deal for him," Petty said.
Petty said he liked SAE because it gave students the opportunity to run the engineering process and take
ideas from all types of racing, from Formula 1 to NASCAR, to create something of their own. Petty said SAE looked forward to continuing its success next year.
"As a team, we were very happy
with third place," Petty said. "It was a little disappointing because we wanted first place, but we know now what we need to do."
Edited by Dylan Sands
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