 Hi, I'm Kate Young, and you're listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these Boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty and alumni taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. Seeing all our team's hard work in countless hours actually come into fruition is one of the best feelings in the world. When I joined this team, getting into the top 15, even top 20, was not a guarantee. It was not something that we were confident about achieving as a team. Seeing it build up from where it was from the start throughout where it is now is amazing. As we kick off another school year at Purdue, we're focusing on a student organization and going behind the scenes with the students themselves to learn more about the Purdue Formula Society of Automotive Engineers, or SAE. Each year since 1983, these Purdue SAE students design and build custom race cars, then compete against hundreds of other universities from around the world, including teams from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Germany as part of SAE's Collegiate Design Series. In June 2022, the Purdue Formula SAE team finished second overall at Michigan International Speedway, their best finish in 30 years. But it took plenty of persistence and teamwork to finally get there. We caught up with a few of the 2021-2022 Purdue Formula SAE team members as they unveiled their race car at a live event this spring. Listen in as Helen Rumsey, Dominic Nocon, and Arpit Agrawal walk us through how this student organization provides hands-on experience to create innovative car designs and test engineering skills with real-world problems. Arpit, who is majoring in aeronautics and astronautics, works on the car's aerodynamics this year. He explains the SAE organization overall and the three different race cars that Purdue students build throughout the year leading up to these summer competitions. This is the SAE unveiling event. SAE stands for Society of Automotive Engineers. They hold like a Collegiate Design Series where basically universities from all around the world, not just the U.S., can compete against other universities. Specifically, these three are race car teams. So we got the internal combustion engine team, which the three of us are part of. Then we got the Baja team and then the electric racing team. So all of us kind of compete in different style races. Electric racing and us kind of compete in more autocross style. And then Baja does off-roading endurance races. But yeah, it's all the SAE organization. Like if you get really involved in the team, then you can get credit out of this. So as long as you're part of the mechanical engineering program, you're allowed to use this as your senior design project. But everyone else who's part of the team is just using this as a club. So it is a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun. To break these three teams and cars down further, the Purdue Baja SAE team builds single seat off-road cars. The Purdue Formula SAE team builds a single seat formula style car with an internal combustion engine. And the Purdue Electric Racing team builds a similar formula style car with electric motors powered by a 300 volt battery pack that can go from 0 to 60 in under four seconds. Now, as you probably can imagine, designing and building these custom race cars takes time. The teams start planning out their cars in the summer. And once they're back on campus in August, they work on finalizing the design elements. Here's Dominic, who was the chief engineer for this 2022 team. He graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from Purdue this spring. The summers are around May or June. Once the competition ends from the previous year. In a normal year, we would design all the way up until the end of October and then manufacturing from the end of October to the start of March. Once the snow starts to melt and then once winter's over, we could go outside and test for in-soul competition in May. That's right. The students are always keeping their fingers crossed that March brings minimal snow because getting into these cars and practicing is an integral part of preparing for competitions. But for our pit, shoveling snow at the Grand Pre-Track to get a few practice laps in was actually one of his favorite memories of the entire year. When we were initially testing the car, this was back in late February or early March, there was obviously snow on the ground. And we test our car at the Purdue Grand Pre-Track, which was fully covered in snow the day that we first wanted to go test. And me alongside a couple others went and bought some shovels from Ben Hardwoods and went and just shoveled the snow in the morning such that enough to have it melt away so that we can go actually run the car later in the afternoon. I think that is one of my favorite memories just because it kind of shows our overall dedication of the team. We're willing to wake up and go and shovel an entire track just so we can take our car out for a couple hours and actually improve that it works. And it's just something that I guess not a lot of teams can say they've had to go do. This year, for the first time, Purdue SAE hosted a public event on campus to unveil all three teams' custom-built race cars. Since the students design, build, and test these cars throughout the year and don't compete until summer, most of Purdue's students and faculty never get the chance to see these finished race cars before the semester ends. But this year, that all changed. Parents, family members, friends, and other students filled Fowler Hall to support these students and the energy was electric. No pun intended. Jared Pike, the communication specialist for Purdue's School of Mechanical Engineering, served as the emcee for this live event. Purdue is the perfect place for students who are passionate about motorsports. Every part of every car you see on the stage was designed and built by students here at Purdue, except for maybe engines or tires or shocks. These cars are 100% Purdue engineers. And these students have poured thousands of hours of work into these cars, most of it on their own time, after classes. Are you ready to see our first car? The podcast team was there and it was a blast meeting and interviewing some of these Boilermakers. The official This is Purdue podcast hosted by our own Kate Young, who is here today. So say hi to her, get some podcast swag, and pay attention to that story because she is awesome. That awesome podcast guest Jared is referring to? Well, it's none other than Purdue Mechanical Engineering alum and indie car engineer Angela Ashmore, who was also part of Purdue Formula SAE when she was a student. If you haven't checked out our This is Purdue episodes with Angela, who was the first woman crew member to win the Indianapolis 500, by the way. Be sure to watch on YouTube or listen on your favorite podcast app. Okay, so sure, Purdue SAE features heavy engineering work, but another key aspect of the student organization is the business and management side of building the cars. The students are responsible for finding sponsors for their cars and negotiating for in-kind donations of things like parts, materials, and services. Each team has a business team that helps raise and manage money. Dominic tells us more about the importance of these sponsors. On average, it takes probably around $70,000 to build at least the formula car. And a lot of that is done through the help of the mechanical engineering school, various other colleges on campus. But in addition to that, we have sponsors for parts such as like radiators or cooling tubes, et cetera, as well as our engine. Boeing, Cummins, Ford, and dozens of other companies have contributed as sponsors and their logo decals can be seen on different parts of these finished race cars, just as we would see in a professional racing series like IndyCar. Todd Nelson was also part of this live unveiling. He serves as the managing director of Purdue Motorsports and faculty advisor for all three SAE teams. Todd told us that not only are these students developing professional skills to take into the real world, they're also essentially running a race team and small engineering firm. They strengthen their engineering skills, as you can imagine, by building the cars and applying everything they've learned in their classrooms to design abilities. But they also gain an understanding of the importance of program management so they can get all of this done in this tight timeline of one year and within their budget, which is essential. They also learn how to work with lots of different people and lots of different perspectives, lots of different opinions and how to figure out what to do and how to get it done and be effective. And then my favorite, they learn incredible leadership skills. They're such good leaders that they get college students to voluntarily give up most of their social life and a lot of sleep to work on these cars. For Todd, this role is extra special to him because he's a former Purdue Formula SAE member himself. As you can see there from the picture, I was heavily involved with Formula as a student when I was a mechanical engineering student back in the day. And the experience was just absolutely invaluable to me. I used what I learned pretty much every day in my 15-year career in automotive and aerospace. And so when Purdue actually offered me the job to come back here and said would you like to be the faculty advisor as well, I almost saw off my chair and thought it was a dream come true. And it has been, it's been absolutely awesome. Okay, so as I mentioned, Purdue Formula SAE had their best ever podium finish in June, second place overall. So let's get into the competition side of SAE. This May and June, the teams traveled to Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan as part of SAE's Collegiate Design Series. This isn't a small competition. Remember, there are dozens of university teams from the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Germany. And this isn't limited to one big race. There's multiple events that the students are judged on and can earn podium finishes for. Helen is an upcoming junior studying mechanical engineering, and she serves as the chassis team lead for Purdue Formula SAE. Helen discusses the different events at these competitions. At the competition we're competing for us specifically, we have like four dynamic events. So we're doing like acceleration and skid pad. Then as like Arpit mentioned, the autocross and then an endurance, which is like autocross but longer. And then we also have the static event. So like the design event where we're presenting on like why we made specific design decisions and all that. So it's more than just like racing the car. It's also like our understanding of the car that we built. There's kind of like the two portions, like you want your car to do really well, but you also want to make sure that everyone on the team has a good understanding of the design behind the car so that you can do well in the design event. You could place first an acceleration and like last an endurance. The results of all those races determine the results of the competition. So there's multiple factors to it. Arpit expands on what these competition weekends look like for the team. The competition is broke up into like four days. The first day is just kind of like you prepping your car and then all the SAE workers like the volunteers are setting up the event. They're just kind of getting prepped on like doing all the behind-the-scenes work. The second day is where they actually inspect your car. So to be able to compete in the race you have to make sure that your car is actually safe. That means going through the rule book and making sure like you pass every single rule in the book. All the teams kind of get staged outside like a bay. You go inside and then there's like assigned inspectors who like go through your car and just make sure everything like looks good and like they check it off from there. The second to last day is where we do all the like autocross events. That's where you have a random course thrown at you and then you just kind of like have the driver sit in and go around that random course. Then you have the acceleration event which is like more of like a drag race. You sit in the car and just floor it and try to go as fast as possible. Then you have the skip head event which is just kind of going and like figure eights just kind of like circles. Then based on your results from those three events they kind of like stage you on like which place you're going for the endurance event and that's like the last day. So the last day is like all the teams competing. It's 22 kilometers. You all just like stage together and your driver goes in and like each driver does like half of that. That's kind of like I guess the full duration. So it starts off like inspecting the car then you go into like those small races and then it's the long one at the very end. The endurance race he just mentioned goes for about 16 miles and takes around 20 minutes which he says doesn't seem like a lot but many things could go wrong during that time frame if the car isn't fully prepared ahead of this big race. He says just finishing the endurance race is a massive achievement and what about the drivers of these cars? There's four drivers in total. There's two that do like the autocross and endurance event. Our chief engineer Dominic right here is actually one of the drivers and then there's two other drivers who do like acceleration and skidpad event. How do you get to be the driver and the chief engineer? Most of it's just putting a lot of work into the team. Over the years I guess freshman year started out doing drivetrain things and then became a powertrain team lead so in charge of all the engine and engine management stuff my sophomore and junior years when then I decided to take on the role for chief this year. Last year I was trained as an acceleration and skidpad driver but I just kind of improved from there to get this vision now. This year the team entered their first competition in May at Michigan International Speedway. They finished ninth in the endurance race third in design and second in sales presentation and when combined with all of the other events they finished sixth place overall among 99 teams. They were also the fastest single cylinder engine on the grid. These results are fantastic but we are talking about Boilermakers after all. They weren't ready to give up just quite yet. They were persistent. They were innovative. They worked together and they re-entered the car in another competition at Michigan International Speedway in June. At this competition the team placed second in design first in skidpad third in autocross and second in the endurance race and they jumped up to a second place finish overall. Arpit who will be the future chief engineer of the 2022- 2023 Purdue Formula SAE team describes the feeling of bringing home nine trophies between two competitions. Seeing all our team's hard work and countless hours actually come into fruition and come with the results that we got is one of the best feelings in the world. When I joined this team getting into the top 15 even top 20 was not a guarantee. It was not something that we were confident about achieving as a team. Seeing it build up from where it was from the start throughout where it is now is amazing. I'm extremely proud and happy that I got to be part of the people that helped build up the fundamentals of the team, build up the foundation to get where we are now. And what did it mean to Arpit and his teammates to make Purdue Formula SAE history this summer? Our team has finally figured out how to build a reliable and efficient car. It's kind of weird in a sense that some other people would think of this as like a oh you got second place like now what more is there. For me I see this as a level one achievement of our team rather than being there at the top. The reason I say this is because the goal of my team and just me personally is to be a consistently winning team. So just because we got second place this year doesn't necessarily mean that we've done all the achievements that we've wanted to do. I would really like to continue building on our fundamentals, continue making more achieving more complex decisions overall trying to aim for the number one spot and continuously aim for the number one spot not just next year but the year after that, the year after that and be a team that can consistently win the competition. I think it's going to be a very big goal in general and be something that our team strives for next. Their persistence certainly paid off. For Dominic and Arpit a large part of why they wanted to come to Purdue University was because of Purdue Formula SAE and its strong reputation. Here's Dominic. For me I'm born and raised in San Francisco, California. When I was applying to colleges I applied to Purdue because it's one of the best engineering schools in the country so I moved from big city out to the Midwest and I guess a lot of the ways of spending my time is on this team. What was that adjustment like coming from a big city like that? It was pretty different but I keep myself busy on the team. This team is also one of the reasons why I applied to Purdue. I saw they had a really good result in 2018 and that's where I wanted to apply and join like a highly competitive team. And here's Arpit who is from the Midwest but didn't want to go to that one engineering school about 30 minutes from his house. I'm from the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan but I guess as an aerospace engineer there's the Purdue Cradle of Astronauts so obviously like this was like really up there. Alongside that as Dom said I kind of like looked at the results of this team and wanted to join it but my kind of thinking was like I really just wanted to get out of my comfort zone. A lot of people I knew were going to like University of Michigan so I wanted to like just get to know like different people so that's where I kind of like filtered out to like Cradle of Astronauts get to know different people and get a cool race team. As for Helen, well she was pretty much destined to become a boiler maker. I'm from Indiana both my parents went to Purdue and did Purdue Engineering. It was always something that I considered kind of like grew up in a Purdue family. At the end of the day Purdue has a really good engineering program and there's a lot of opportunities like club wise like this club that I'm in and like research and other stuff so I chose it because of that and then also the in-state price first intuition is really like hard to be like hitting all the sweets economically like it really doesn't make sense to go anywhere but Purdue for me. As for the Purdue formula SAE students who graduated this spring Todd says he's always been a big believer in using motorsports as a springboard for students future careers. Students are able to make connections and have those networking opportunities through this organization between the judges and volunteers at these competitions many of which come from massive companies like Ford, Honda, and Tesla. In fact Arpit is currently in his second round of an internship with SpaceX. He says the reason for this internship opportunity with a brand like SpaceX is all thanks to formula SAE. Incoming sophomore Troy Crooks is majoring in chemical engineering technology and automation systems integration engineering technology. You're gonna have to break that down for me. Okay so I'm in mechanical engineering technology so that's in the school of polytech so I'm not in all these guys are in the college of engineering so I'm double majoring which is only like five or six extra classes where I take more hands-on like robotics classes and machining integration. Troy is interested in pursuing a full-time job in professional motorsports after graduation so being a part of the Purdue formula SAE is the perfect opportunity for him to learn and hone these skills. So we're both freshmen but like just looking at the experience any racing just getting my hands dirty ideally the dream job would be formula one but who doesn't want to work in a formula one track side would be so cool they traveled like 23 different countries races all over the world. I feel like that'd be a really cool experience but any car is so close so getting an internship is a goal for the next couple years then see what happens. Troy's formula SAE teammate Zach McNabb is an incoming sophomore who is majoring in mechanical engineering. Zach is interested in the professional motorsports world as well. There's a lot of different classes and I think any of them would be really cool. IMSA, IndyCar, formula one as well and like all the formula two and three series over in Europe track side I think would be really cool personally kind of traveling around with the team it's like getting them a broad opportunity. Purdue SAE will be hosting a call out for all Purdue students on Wednesday August 31st at 7 p.m. in the electrical engineering building EE 129. Following short presentations from each SAE team there will be a meet and greet at the engineering fountain. Here students can ask team leaders questions in an informal setting and get better idea of which team would be a good fit for them. This episode was so fun because our podcast team was able to meet these students chat in person and check out the unveilings of these incredible cars. Featuring students on this is Purdue is always really special to us. If you enjoyed this episode be sure to subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Simply scroll down on the app and click write a review. We always love hearing your feedback. Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode visit our website at purdue.edu slash podcast. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review and as always Boiler up!