ERAU Motorsports team

The ERAU Motorsports team in Daytona Beach designs and builds a high caliber FSAE car for the Michigan competition each year. As part of the engineering curriculum at ERAU the team is mainly comprised of juniors and seniors who are mechanical engineering students studying high performance vehicles. In a way to strengthen the teams understanding of the dynamics of the vehicle, a group of students traveled to the OHLINS facility to utilize their advance 4-post shaker rig. A test plan was developed in order to achieve a wide range of usable data in the limited time allotted for testing. With assistance from the engineers at OHLINS the team was able to run 27 test with a range of input variables of the shaker rig while the team made adjustments to the dampers and spring settings on the car. Throughout the day the team found success in terms of mechanical tire grip with a 2% increase on the front and an impressive improvement of more than 20% on the rear. Perhaps the greatest take away from the day was the discovery of the effect of friction in the moving components of the suspension. This understanding helped the team redesign the main pivot point of the suspension on the front and rear. The team is making plans to return to OHLINS with the new car with hopes of obtaining valuable data for design judging at competition