AUBURN HILLS – FEV North America announced the recipients of its FEV Powertrain Development Award, presented to three collegiate teams that designed, developed and demonstrated exemplary powertrain solutions in the 2014 Formula SAE competition held May 14 ? 17 at Michigan International Speedway.
Locally, the University of Akron finished in 5th place; Saginaw Valley State University placed 10th; the University of Toledo was in the 12th position; the University of Michigan Ann Arbor finished in 13th place; Oakland University was at the 17th position; Michigan State University broke into the top twenty-five in 23rd position.
The Powertrain Development Award considers critical powertrain relevant aspects, including performance, fuel economy, durability and cost in determining a winner. The Award uses a quantitative scoring system as a metric, or equation, for the optimization process that the student teams go through as they develop solutions, much like the work that a professional engineer might perform on a day-to-day basis. There are multiple solution paths that a team can employ to win.
The 2014 FEV Powertrain Award winners were:
1st place: Lafayette College (492.9 pts of 900 possible)
2nd place: Carleton University (431.5 pts)
3rd place: Centro Universitario Da FEI (414.8 pts)
“The technologies that the students develop for the FSAE competition mirror the kinds of projects that automotive engineers perform in the automotive industry,” said Robert J. Last, vice president of communications, marketing, and compliance for FEV. “In today’s industry, technologies such as downsizing, boosting and lightweighting are important in the powertrain arena and they are equally important in the FSAE competition. Like engineers working in the industry, these teams understand that both high performance and optimal fuel economy are necessary in current and future powertrains. The FEV Powertrain Development Award rewards excellence in these areas by adapting an objective, equation-based approach that can be optimized by the FSAE team. FEV congratulates the winners and recognizes their efforts.”
Student teams must adhere to the rules specified by the SAE, which can be found in the on the Formula SAE Web site,. As they develop engineering solutions for their vehicles, students will have also mastered critical elements of strategy planning, project management, contingency planning, and logistics management, said Last.
The overall winner of this year’s FSAE-Michigan event was Oregon State University, followed by the Technical University of Munich, and the University of Stuttgart took 3rd place. Locally, the University of Michigan Ann Arbor finished in 8th position.
