Help with F1 Assignment

[gedders2010]

Hello,
I'm a student studying Motorsport at college and have been set an assignment to write a report on how the refueling ban will affect formula 1. Below is a list of changes that will be discussed in my report and i would like some suggestions on any more possible changes to the cars.

Bigger Fuel Tank
Strategy Changes
Tyre compound choices
length of car (Due to bigger fuel tank)
Width of car (Again due to size of fuel tank, but unlikely due to bigger drag compared to longer car)
Fuel mapping (To create better fuel economy)
Suspension set up
Weight transfer increase
Car behaviour on track
Driver position relative to longitudinal centre of the car

Any more suggestions will be greatly appreciated and will credit the forums in my paper.

[Jersey Tom]

Well.. let's start off with.. what do you think?

[SZ]

I'm bored today. I'll bite.

SO, let's get this straight:

You'd pay good money to attend a college course to prepare you for entry into an elite, technical industry - where those that teach you would mark you favourably for referencing information you obtained off other randoms hiding behind pseudonyms on an internet forum?

Take a good look at your teacher and yourself. Between the two of you there's an idiot in there somewhere.

(I'd love to see the potential F1 interview that follows - "So, applicant, how did you solve this problem?" - "Well, team principal, as my references attest, first I logged onto an internet forum and canvassed a bunch of uncredited opinions...")

I'd suggest you've got a nice list of abstractions to start with. Get yourself a nice sheet of butcher's paper and a pen, and start linking them, stick-and-bubble style. Or just any exercise that works for you that takes the concepts that pop into your head and starts ordering them into a logical semblance. Once you've done this, start a process whereby you can attach weightings to various families of changes/effects to allow you to express them in terms of relative importance.

A few back-of-the-envelope (e.g. nothing terribly involved) engineering calcs are useful in guiding this process. 'Throwing it out to the WWW fanbois' is not. For this, you may need to do some independent research and subsequent thinking, which is free save the effort on your part. This can be done from home, or, should you feel like bucking the trend of many modern students, you can get off your ass and get thee to an engineering library, where you may discover that many learned people have had a good, useful bit more to say about anything that might interest you at this very elementary stage of your career.

Be prepared to iterate this process a few times as you discover new things that you'd like to have included first time around. There are a number you've left off that list, and a few that are irrelevant, but they're for you to discover. It's your report.

Engineering project work is all about structuring your efforts. At this point you have enough to write a very good report, blind. I hope you've not done an engineering degree prior to your motorsports course, as the above constitutes baby steps in any engineering undertaking and is generally taught in 2nd-3rd year of any reputable engineering course. If you are successful in achieving a career in motorsports, this is something you'll go through time and time again, and your ability to better structure your efforts in an engineering project - to better synthesise, address, deconstruct, appraise, quantify, summarise and act on key issues - will make you a better candidate in a highly competitive work environment. There are people in motorsports that can't do this as well, and they don't go as far.

You - and every other student posting here in a similar vein - are severely undermining your potential by doing so.

I hope you're intelligent enough to appraise the intention of what I've taken the time to write, and that you reconsider your initial question after a bit of work on your part.

I hope the mods reconsider their position on allowing such threads. I'm not the only one less intent on partaking in F1T because of them.

[Carlos]

SZ requested:
"I'd suggest you've got a nice list of abstractions to start with. Get yourself a nice sheet of butcher's paper and a pen, and start linking them, stick-and-bubble style. Or just any exercise that works for you that takes the concepts that pop into your head and starts ordering them into a logical semblance. Once you've done this, start a process whereby you can attach weightings to various families of changes/effects to allow you to express them in terms of relative importance."

Here is a list of freeware charting programs to organize ideas,research notes, diagrams,flowcharts, even links to related researched sites. You could refer to them as 'mindmap' programs, some are tree structure although several use a wide variety of relational matrix.
Text2.mindmap.com
lovelycharts.com
xmind.net
mindmeister.com
mind42.com
vue.tuffs.ed
mindomo.com
Dia/Linux/Windows http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/DIA_Charts.html

Combined with the F1Technical Engineering Student Resources, acsess to any concievable question, where information is available. (Although most questions require information that would only be held by design offices, students would certainly not want F1 team/race team administrators to start 'witch hunts' to find and fire, F1T members.) Students should use of search engines:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4813

What to Search: Google surveys approximately 2% of the information on the web, deep search engines acsess approaches 90% of the rest of internet information content; begin with the deep search engines recommended here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Web

The first entry of Engineering Student Resources thread even details how to organize and write papers. The ESR thread is a 'sticky' near the top of the 'Off Topic Chat' section of the Forum.

Another source of information to consult, before starting a 'request' thread is to utilize the F1Technical Search Function located at the right top corner of the F1T Home Page.

Gedders2010; I recently submitted a post to another student on the Composite Wishbone thread, 3rd post:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7771

A scathing post undeserved as Swordfish reported visual and cognitive impairment, choosing to believe him, consulting a friend, a neurophycologist to confirm the possibility of such impairments, I supplied site information, although in hindsight, his problem could have been solved in conversation with his University Professor for an extension and University Counselling for asessment of his cognitive impairment and attention to revising his university commitments.

Having offered the above information to all future students inquiries, I no longer accept the validity of such student requests in the future, with the exception of a student asking specific questions, exhibiting a general knowledge of the inquiry, with the inclusion of a bibliography of the sources the student has already consulted:
http://www.easybib.com/
http://www.aresearchguide.com/12biblio.html

I will edit the first post of the Engineering Student Resource sighting this Thread for future use of students and forum members who may find reference to it useful.

I agree with SZ when he said:
"I hope the mods reconsider their position on allowing such threads. I'm not the only one less intent on partaking in F1T because of them."

In the future I will post a reference to this thread each time another appears.

[PlatinumZealot]

I don't know about you guys.. But one thing I learned from my degree was that "ask first, work later" works faster. It's just a difference in approach; you can do the hard work after you get the degree . It's just school; JUST GET OUTA THERE!!

Learn more work less! Work smarter not harder! don't school your way into engineering! engineer your way out of school

Having said that, Forums helped me a whole lot in my final year project, because the detailed information that I was looking for, was not divulged in the books at the library. My project was based on gas turbines and the limiting factor was the design of the flame tube. The book gave me some details but not experiences which was was of prime importance. I only had about 3 months to build it.. and I found the forums when it was too late! It got built of course but the flame tube design was botched together! lol
Any way, I am just saying that there is nothing wrong with asking for help even if its to the point of annoyance. It his responsibility to to face the consequences of this approach, AFTER he finishes school. If he misses out on key skills that he could have learnt by doing it the "hard way" then let it be so. Right now getting that Degree is most important! GET OUTA THERE!! We shouldn't deny him information just because he chose to work the smart way..

[WhiteBlue]

Hello,
I'm a student studying Motorsport at college and have been set an assignment to write a report on how the refueling ban will affect formula 1. Below is a list of changes that will be discussed in my report and i would like some suggestions on any more possible changes to the cars.

Bigger Fuel Tank
Strategy Changes
Tyre compound choices
length of car (Due to bigger fuel tank)
Width of car (Again due to size of fuel tank, but unlikely due to bigger drag compared to longer car)
Fuel mapping (To create better fuel economy)
Suspension set up
Weight transfer increase
Car behaviour on track
Driver position relative to longitudinal centre of the car

Any more suggestions will be greatly appreciated and will credit the forums in my paper.

off the top of my head I have some additional items:

tyre construction
tyre geometry
tyre spring rate (stiffer)
tyre change intervals
CoG
Change of CoG
brake energy
braking distances
race craft (like watch competitors tyre conditions and plan your own)
ride height
pit stop safety
transport costs
pit stop personnel
pit stop times
refuelling personnel

[xpensive]

You never considered the "Party first, copy'n paste later" approach, did you smikle?

[PlatinumZealot]

Copy and paste I like that phrase I did that for the labs Change a few values in excel, then CAREFULLY reword the discussion and conclusion. Cross reference.. print..

Then hand it:




I won't do it anymore If I go to do a Masters though. The risk is too high. Some of the lecturers actually found out about me, but they just didn't have conclusive evidence; too close for comfort. Of course for projects I didn't do it. I like doing projects.

[xpensive]

What's that Uni anyway? I just begin to wonder if some of my engineers are from the same place...

[SZ]

n smikle

I'm not going to go into what I consider to be a very poor attitude towards technical university study that you've projected. You're right in that what anyone does with their privilege to attend university is up to them.

Regards this place though, this is a technical forum. In addition to the context it's been created in (hence the name 'F1technical') a user forum is founded on principal of open participation. There's nothing open about announcing your presence and demanding information concerning a question asked of you, for which you've made no original attempt to answer. Beyond being contrary to the spirit of a forum, it's also quite rude.

But we've got some (the usual) ready fools biting too, so it becomes a question of what kind of forum this wants to be.

If it's one that tolerates this kind of --- - my take on what threads started in this vein are - I'll gladly close my account, as it's not for me.

Given that I've now typed '---' twice in the same post I'd expect a mod to weigh in regardless and reword my post; I'd hope they could similarly clarify the forum's stance on what direction it's taking. Appreciably the mods have limited time to keep the boards clean in but given the choice between policing the odd bit of colourful language or preserving this place as a home of high-integrity, open, technical discussions... I know what I'd pick.

[Jersey Tom]

Copy and paste I like that phrase I did that for the labs Change a few values in excel, then CAREFULLY reword the discussion and conclusion. Cross reference.. print..

Then hand it:




I won't do it anymore If I go to do a Masters though. The risk is too high. Some of the lecturers actually found out about me, but they just didn't have conclusive evidence; too close for comfort. Of course for projects I didn't do it. I like doing projects.

Honestly, you're only --- yourself with that approach. You'll get to industry, and be out to lunch when it comes to tackling difficult problems. Trust me.. seen it happen plenty.

Enjoy easy street while it lasts...

[gedders2010]

In my defence its only college not university level yet. And this is a research project designed to help us source engineering principles in preparation for degree level work. The only difference between asking here and looking it up in the book is here i believe there is a greater bank of knowledge. And another reason for asking here is to make my assignment the best i can. All i wanted was a list of changes so that i can delve further.

[bhall]

That'll show you.

Askin' questions around here.

The nerve.

[PNSD]

Not a bad defence there, but I think the best post in this thread so far is Jersey Tom's.

Firstly say how you think the ban on refuelling will influence the list in your original post. From that you will recieve the help you are looking for by people here expanding with what they know. It looks as though you are asking for another to complete your work for you. I say, you bring something here, and others will help you out then .

[gedders2010]

thanks PNSD & White Blue, you two have been very good in helping me. Carlos and SZ deserve credit aswell for helping me understand the etiquette for the forums.