Over the past few years, the team has made great strides. MRT15 was the first McGill Rac-ing Team car equipped with an aerodynamics package, allowing the car to significantly in-crease performance while cornering. This year, the team is pushing even further through the development of a carbon fibre chassis.

Per the rules, a chassis can only be used for one full year. Therefore, each car is unique and independently constructed. The process of building a new prototype each year can be taxing, but stock parts are often reused and designs refined as opposed to completely re-done.

The beauty surrounding this project is seeing the design improvements each year. As members learn from previous mistakes and draw inspiration from other teams, the design of the prototype becomes more and more developed. In the end, these changes result in better performances at competition.

The McGill Racing Team is an undergraduate engineering design team at McGill University. Since its founding in 1994, the team has gone on to build 19 prototype vehicles: 18 combustion and 1 electric. The most recent generation of cars encompasses MRT11-MRT16 and is based around a BRP Rotax 450cc engine.

The Team

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This year, the McGill Racing Team consists of approx-imately 75 members hailing from the various facul-ties around McGill University. These students come

from different backgrounds, skill sets, and passions; some have been machining for years while others have never held a wrench before. What brings these individuals together is a desire to be part of something bigger than themselves. Each member uses his strengths to the maximum benefit of the team. Even though building this car does not come with course credit or cash, many members spend nights and weekends working tirelessly to fulfill their responsibilities and meet the team deadlines. Veteran members act as role models for their younger teammates, giving them tips on time/project management. Overall, the team has been able to develop an atmosphere of comradery, with each individu-al supporting the others. And this support doesn’t end upon graduation; most alumni enjoy staying involved by providing guidance, both technical and otherwise. Over the past two decades, the team has been able to compile a large amount of knowledge and data stem-ming from this cooperative atmosphere. However, being a university design team, the composition of the members is constantly changing, and therefore significant effort is al-loted to documentation and knowledge transfer to ensure the team continues its positive progression. Documentation

comes in the forms of member handbooks, technical tuto-rials, required readings, and design notebooks. All of these documents are stored on the team’s hard drive and/or on the OneDrive cloud. Management software, in the form of Po-dio, is used to schedule meetings, plan projects, assign tasks, and monitor deadlines. Team contact is managed through a Google group and weekly meetings. Using these methods, the team can stay organized and faciliate the learning curve for new members.

To support these organizational policies, the team has adapted to an alternative management struc-ture. Instead of having specific roles with associated responsi-bilities, the team assigns titles in

reverse; responsibilities are distributed based on the skills, capabilities, and desires of each member, and titles are as-signed to encompass those responsibilities. With this system, the management structure can change each year to accomo-date the team and better serve its needs. The combination of hard-working members, a large, easily accessible database of experience, and a fluid organiza-tional structure has allowed The McGill Racing Team to set high goals, which it believes are essential to the team’s devel-opment, competition results, and the reputation it holds for McGill in the international community. Aside from setting high engineering standards, the team aims to demonstrate its hard work successfully at multiple summer competitions.

The McGill Racing team is more than just a group of students building a racecar. It is a continually growing family stretching back over 20 years. The friendships formed while on the team continue for years to come.

“An atmosphere of comradery, with each individual supporting the others.

A growing family

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FSG Team Photo: 2013 (Scheuplein)

The McGill Racing Team competes against other universities each summer through its particiption in the Formula SAE® student design competition,

organized by SAE International. The concept behind For-mula SAE is that a fictional manufacturing company has contracted a design team to develop a small Formula-style race car. The prototype race car is to be evaluated for its potential as a production item. The target marketing group for the race car is the non-professional weekend autocross racer. Each student team designs, builds and tests a pro-totype based on a series of rules whose purpose is both to ensure onsite safety and promote clever problem solving. These rules are revised each year by a rules panel to fos-ter innovation and create further design challenges. The competition itself is comprised of both static and dynam-ic events, aimed to judge the overall design of the vehicle while also ranking how it performs on track. For Formula SAE teams like ours, competition is a meeting ground to share the team’s work over the past year. The culture is centered around a continuation of the learn-ing experience as opposed to a proving ground. The atmo-sphere emanating from all of the paddocks is one of open-ness and positivity; team members are encouraged to visit other teams and ask questions about their cars. Through these conversations, we learn from our playing field and can generate inspiration for the next design iteration. On the other side of this positive, collaborative atmosphere is the stressful fact that there are only a few

days to prove your car and your design. There are only 45 minutes allotted to explain a year’s worth of design, there are only a few attempts at each dynamic event to find a winning time, and if any part breaks, the result for the run is a DNF. In order to succeed in this format, teams must stay organized and focused, learn to bounce back quickly from setbacks, and above all, work together. Stemming from previous competition experience, the team has established a few guidelines to improve per-formance while at competition These include crew guides, car setup procedures, and periodic team meetings. The goal is to bring the car to competition with significant test-ing time behind it. That way, team members have already reached a sufficient comfort level with the car’s systems; setup and maintenance is quick, and the initial bugs have already been sorted out. In addition to testing time, having a well-thought-out design is always helpful.

The Competition

The Static Events

Technical InspectionEngineering Design

Cost and ManufacturingBusiness Presentation

The Dynamic Events

AccelerationSkid Pad

AutocrossEndurance

Fuel Efficiency

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FSG Competition Photo: 2013 (Scheuplein)

The Premiere World Competition

Largely regarded as the most prestigious and competitive competition in the world, Formula Student Germany is on a whole different level compared to the other com-petitions that the McGill Racing Team has attended. The quality of the teams, the organi-zation of the event, and the support of the lo-cal industry is all top-class. Having attended only once, in 2013, the McGill Racing Team is looking to return to the Hockenheim-ring in 2015 to reach even greater heights.

The Premiere Canadian Competition

A relatively new competition that began in 2012, Formula North was attended by the McGill Racing Team for the first two years. A smaller competition than its other American counterparts, Formula North is the only Cana-dian Competition that adheres to the Formula SAE rulebook. This season, the McGill Racing Team will travel to the Barrie Molson Center in Barrie, Ontario for the third time in its histo-ry, with the aim to bring back more silverware.

The Premiere North American Competition

Formula SAE Michigan is the largest and longest running Formula SAE competition in the world, with 120 combustion teams par-ticipating. Located at Michigan International Speedway (MIS) in Brooklyn, Michigan, this competition is regarded as the most prestigious North American competition. The McGill Rac-ing Team has brought all of its previous com-bustion cars to Michigan for competition and are aiming to reach a podium position in 2015.

Formula SAE(R) Michigan

May 13 - 16 Brooklyn, MI

120 Teams

Best Result: 659.9 (2004)

Formula North

June 4 - 7Barrie, ON25 Teams

Best Result: 477.5 (2013)

Formula Student Germany

July 28 - Aug 2Hockenheim, Germany

75 Teams

Best Result: 648.0 (2013)

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FSG Design Finals: 2013 (Grams)

Reducing mass is the main target for this year’s chassis, which in previous years consisted of a steel tube space frame with aesthetic carbon fiber reinforced plastic

(CFRP) bodywork. The team had a good grasp of space frame design and manufacture and efforts at light-weighting were stag-nating. So, the team chose to take on a new challenge – designing and building our first CFRP monocoque, keeping only manda-tory steel roll hoops. System integration was deemed extremely important since the chassis interacts with every other system on the car. Since brackets cannot simply be welded on like in the past, the mounting of all components had to be accounted for well in ad-vance. Removable panels for access also had to be incorporated. We had the freedom to shape the tub around the driver, and to meet aerodynamic requirements, including a diffuser angle in the rear and a raised footwell to provide clearance around the front wing. Mounting points requiring local reinforcement were kept to a minimum. For instance, attachment points for the steel roll hoops to the monocoque were shared with suspension con-trol arms and shock absorber mounts. To further take advan-tage of these mandatory steel components, the rear wing was mounted to the main hoop bracing, the front engine mounts attached to the bottom of the main hoop and the steering col-umn was mounted to the front hoop. Continuing our focus on an overall vehicle design rather than design of individual parts, the drivetrain was mounted to the engine block, reacting these major loads directly back into the block rather than into chassis mounts. Also, rather than have a purely aesthetic nosecone, this year it will work to attenuate impact with the front wing in case of a collision.

Materials were among the first design decisions made – we chose to use woven TeXtreme prepreg (Oxeon, Inc.) for its low crimp and low areal weight, as well as unidirectional (UD) prepreg and aluminum honeycomb core (Plascore). Proving structural equivalency to a baseline steel space frame for the FSAE rules is the most major constraint on the layup design - and a natural starting point. Classical laminate theory was first used to determine ply schedules for sandwich beams, consist-ing of CFRP skins and honeycomb core, to meet equivalency requirements. The rules also required us to perform diverse physical tests – since the mechanical properties of composite structures are highly dependent on processing. An FEA model, including the suspension and engine, was used to check stiffness requirements and safety factors for different static load cases. Fi-berSIM was used to design each ply, transitions between thinner and thicker regions and produce flat patterns for an automated ply cutter. Manufacturing had to be thought of since the begin-ning of the design process, and is already well underway – two male master patterns have been CNC milled out of polyurethane, each pattern representing half the monocoque, split vertically at the car’s centerline. A protective sealer, primer and high gloss topcoat were applied to the patterns. From these patterns female CFRP tools were made – we first applied an aluminum filled surface coat then did a 10-ply wet layup. We cured these tools on the patterns in an oven, followed by a freestanding post-cure to raise the deflection temperature. In the coming months, we will continue with the chassis layup in the tools, which will be brought together to make the chassis in one piece.

Chassis

MRT16

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Downforce has become a major focus of race teams in mo-torsports. Typically achieved through inverted wings, the

benefits of aerodynamic loading of a tire have long been recog-nized, translating into more grip, higher cornering speeds and improved braking performance. As in the other forms of auto-motive racing, recent growth in the performance and availabili-ty of computational resources have enabled the design of highly effective aerodynamic systems on Formula SAE vehicles; this has come despite the low speeds encountered on competition tracks. Student teams, including MRT, have been exploiting these capa-bilities almost un-restricted over the last few years. However, in an attempt to reduce gaps amongst the deep competition field, a new rule book has been introduced for 2015, slashing the geo-metric limits of aerodynamic devices. Recognizing the impor-tance of these features, the challenge to MRT this year is to con-tinue pushing the competitive envelope with our aerodynamics package despite the imposed restrictions. These goals are being achieved through out-of-the-box thinking and a comprehensive use of available tools. Focus has been placed not only on the aerodynamic performance of the system, but weight reduction, manufacturing and simplicity to ensure only the most efficient and effective design is implement-ed. Design decisions have been facilitated through the assistance of a team-developed lap-time simulator, able to quantify com-

promises on each component in terms of vehicle performance. In addition to this, significant time has been invested in ad-vancing the team’s numerical capabilities, securing resources on high-performance computing servers and utilizing advanced CFD and optimization techniques. The result of all of these ef-forts is a high design turnover rate and accelerated convergence towards the team’s aerodynamic targets for the 2015 season!

MRT16 will be the sixth car designed around the BRP Rotax DS450 engine; however for the first time, it will be fueled

by E85 ethanol as opposed to 93 octane. By developing and integrating a bio-renewable powertrain, we have been able to increase our power output for most of the drive. Additionally, we have partnered with a local supplier, Greenfield Ethanol, which produces their ethanol from waste bio-mass using innovative methods. The main sources of this bio-mass are the agricultural and forestry sectors as well as city waste collection services, which divert urban bio-mass waste that cannot be reused or recycled, to produce ethanol fuel rather than transporting it to a landfill. Running our vehicle on E85 leads to 63% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, while also increasing the thermal efficiency of our engine. Much of this season is dedicated to optimizing our powertrain unit to better exploit the E85 fuel option using engine control strategies and dynamometer test data. This will help us ensure that the powertrain is both transforming the chemical energy within the fuel efficiently, as well as eliminating harmful emissions within the combustion by-products.

This season, the powertrain system saw two major rules changes, one affecting turbocharged engine systems, with the other addressing noise emissions. Considering these two changes, the team has dedicated a large amount of time developing a turbocharged engine setup in addition to a modified naturally-aspirated (NA) setup. A turbocharged system could provide efficiency increases and decreased noise at the expense of extra weight and complexity, while the NA system remains simple yet loud. Therefore, for the NA option, custom mufflers need to be developed in order to attenuate the noise per the new rules specifications. By exploring these two design paths simultaneously, turbo and NA, and testing them on our dynamometer, we can make an evaluated decision on which system best fits the need of the car and the requirements of the rules.

Powertrain

Aerodynamics

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Media Gallery

Open House 2014

Testing and Manufacturing

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Sponsor Contributions

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