Search Results

The main purpose of Formula SAE competition (hereafter called “FSAE”) is to let students learn the basic ability necessary for engineers through design, fabrication and test projects[1],[3],[5],[6],[7],[8],[9]. In this study the authors decided to adopt Honda CBR 600 RR which was an engine for motor cycles. Then the engine have strength enough for the light weight design[2],[4]. As the course of the competition consists of short straights and many corners for running within equal to or less than middle speed range, the engine must have excellent acceleration performance to reduce the lap times in the corners. The effective engine performance is necessary for the flat torque in all of engine speed range, especially in low engine speed range. As the regulation allows that a turbocharger is fitted to an engine, its introduction is effective for getting high torque in the low engine speed range.

Formula SAE is one of the competitions of the manufacturing education for students, which is held by SAE. The competition consists of the static events and the dynamic events. The static events have three competitions of presentation, cost and design, and the dynamic events are acceleration, skid pad, autocross and endurance with fuel consumption. To get the higher rank in this competition, we must win the dynamic events with the high allotment points. For the purpose of the winning, we should have some advantages more than the other universities. We aimed at raising engine power and drivability. There are some ways to get engine power up such as the combustion improvement, the change of the cam profile and supercharging. We tried to install a commercial turbocharger to a normal aspirated multi-cylinder engine for Formula SAE under the SAE regulations.

The regulations of Formula SAE® competitions restrain design, tuning, and improvement on engine in order to keep safety on driving. The competitors have basically chosen a 600 cc, 4-stroke engine for motorcycle according to the regulations. Therefore, it is necessary for higher engine performance to improve combustion by investigation of air intake and exhaust component design while the regulation agreement is the most important factor. Recently, many competitors have been using a high performance Engine Control Unit (ECU) easy to suitably control the engine combustion. The competitors can focus on optimization of the intake and exhaust components using ECU. Best tuning of each component is very difficult work because the design factors of these components have complicated relations with engine performance. Here, our interest is a method to reduce the optimization time of the system.