Chassis design, theories vs. facts

The acknowledged world's best race car designer got there by doing an aeronautical degree ... not a ME. Thus if I was a young guy looking to follow that path, I'd do an aeronautical degree too.

Best
Pete

 

... as I did some more research:

2006
RENAULT - Rob White - Mechanical engineering degree at Southampton University.
WILLIAMS - Sam Michael - Mechanical Engineering at the University of New South Wales.
FERRARI - Ross Brawn - Attended Reading School in Reading, Berkshire, England. In the early 1970s, Brawn was taken on as a trainee engineer by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority at their Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell, Oxfordshire, where he studied instrumentation.
MCLAREN - Adrian Newey - Aeronautical degree.
TOYOTA - Noritoshi Arai - ?
MIDLAND F1 - Adrian Burgess - ?
HONDA RACING - Geoffrey Willis - ?
SCUDERIA TORO ROSSO - Gabrielli Tredozi - ?
RED BULL RACING - Mark Smith - ?
SUPER AGURI - Mark Preston - ?
BMW-SAUBER - Willy Rampf - Graduated with a vehicle engineering degree from Munic in 1979.

Best
Pete

 

A single data point means nothing.

 

Agree, see my last post .

Pete

 

Exactamundo

Out of the couple thousand professional race engineers in the past 20 years...I'd say majority have standard Mechanical Engineering base degree, then Masters/PhD vary accorsingly to their specific field/concentration.

 

Sorry for the delayed response.

I got an mech engineering degree from a school that also runs a vehicular design course as an area of specialization (others were robotics, materials, etc).

I chose that school specifically for the vehicle relationship, I was able to work on projects that Auto manufacturerers developed with the college. So it gave me a huge head start. I was able to work with wind tunnel models, electric and hybrid technologies, chassis and structural designs, engine theory and design, and so-on.

After graduation I went straight into racing as opposed to going to Detroit.
It paid off for me as I went int CART Indycar racing as an engineer, and in the meantime continued my studies to recieve a cert with composite materials design and analysis. I was a design/development engineer with the Toyota team, (from the AAR Gurney shops).
When Toyota pulled out, I went to Ford and developed prototype and concept vehicles and technologies Did some fun projects.

From there I went to Brembo in the North American office, and spent alot of time in Italy (no complaints:}) I worked on high performance projects as a design engineer and also developed and ran the road testing department in USA.
From there I bounced to Prodrive in the USA. It was going to be a big entry into USA and develop lots of technical and performance programs in the USA. However, it didnt work out so well for Prodrive in USA (long story).

So I started a small braking company with my friend Martin (who went to the same school as me), Martin was an engineer for Porsche for many years, and was in aerospace previous to that. Most people know me here on this forum from Girodisc, the company we run, as we are sponsors here. We develop braking systems and technologies for racing and performance cars.

In the meantime I was hired into Ferrari/Maserati - and then didnt end up going to Italy..its a long story with lots of Italian twists..that isnt over yet.

So now I am in Japan, where I am working on some JOEM projects, and continuing to help run Girodisc.

-so to answer you briefly...yes math is critical.You dont need to just understand the math, you had better be able to develop your own formulas to describe things. You will end up a draftsman otherwise. Project managing engineers need to understand everything that goes into a system or part, from the functional performance expectation, to the process and cost of making every part of it. There is NO substitute for practical hands on experience. Get your hands dirty. If you dont have the answer when you need to, you wont be the guy who gets to play with the fun projects.

Cheers

Eric

 

Yes of course, but it depends on the vehicle type. The priorities of design are very different for expected duty.

Aero in production cars is secondary to packaging ands use requirements, it is of primary importance to a Lemans prototype or F1 car.

There are literally thousands of large and small factors that dictate how a chassis design is finalized. I havent even scratched the surface of the list.

But at a basic level, especially for a racing or performance car, Its all about the tire.

Cheers
Eric