Full Blue Racing |
What is Formula Student? |
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Full Blue Racing (FBR) is the Formula Student team of the University of Cambridge. Established in 2006, FBR is a team of around 50 students from all years, mainly from the Engineering Department. Each year we design and build a single seater racing car to be entered in an International Formula Student competition, where the team compete against universities from around the world.
2016 saw the team broaden its horizons - competing in the Spanish Formula Student competition and ranking as the best British team. We are always looking to attract new members to work on our entry to the 2019 competition. With a brand new team garage at the department coupled with a new workshop in the Dyson Centre and a good grounding of preparation work over the summer - we are in a fantastic position to do even better this year! We passionately believe in the benefits the project has at both degree and career level, and we encourage the whole University, local businesses and media to get involved. |
Formula Student UK is Europe’s most established educational motorsport competition, run by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). The 2016 competition saw over 3,000 participants attending competition ranging 100+ teams from over 30 countries. The competition is judged on racing, design and manufacturing. Each year the challenge is to produce a prototype for a 1000 unit-per-year production run for a vehicle intended for amateur autocross racers.
With this in mind, teams are assessed not only on the speed and handling of the car, but also on business, cost and design presentations; thus the competition provides a fantastic all-round representation of a real design challenge. The competition is viewed by the motorsport industry as “the standard for engineering graduates to meet” and is backed by industry and high profile engineers such as Ross Brawn, Paddy Lowe & Willem Toet. |
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What do we do?
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FBR is loosely split into several sub-teams which are each responsible for an area of the car. For the car to be successful each area must work together properly, and as such there is a high level of collaboration and overlap between each sub team. We encourage new members to try and gain experience in as many of these as possible!
Powertrain
The 2016 car was powered by a Yamaha R6 motorbike engine. The team designed the exhaust and a 3D printed intake for the engine, as well as tuned the engine ECU for maximum performance. Vehicle Dynamics The VD team designs everything that connects the car to the road. This begins with initial simulation and modelling work in Matlab for how the car will handle followed by practical design and manufacture of suspension and wheel components. Every effort is made to manufacture parts in house, and this year many were machined by team members. FBR owes many thanks to Alistair Ross and the CUED workshop staff, who give up a lot of time to help the team and show us what we should be doing! Electronics The car isn’t all mechanical! As well as the power electronics to drive the engine, last year's car featured a touch screen info display for the driver. Our aim for future cars is to improve the driver display into a single, self-contained unit, and also improve the data logging capabilities of the car with GPS and accelerometer data. This will involve programming, PCB design and manufacture. |
Chassis
The frame of the car which holds everything together. The team designs, tests and manufactures a new chassis for the car each year. Big strides have been made in previous years on the actual manufacture of the chassis, with a constantly improving method of producing the chassis jig. The focus this year is on more thorough performance testing of the frame. Bodywork In previous years members of the bodywork team have visited local composite companies to lay up our carbon fibre bodywork by hand. However the bodywork of the FBR16 was all made in house out of glass fibre. Team members got fully involved with making the moulds and laying up the glass fibre layers for the nose-cone and side-pods in the brand new Oatley Garages. Business FBR is entirely funded through outside sponsorship. The business team is responsible for finding and maintaining links with sponsors, as well as managing the team budget. They also produce the business presentation and cost reports for the Formula Student competition. This involves creating a full business plan, marketing materials and factory design as if we were going to launch our car as a production vehicle. If you would like to join the team, please click below! |