If you like a challenge then try this one - design and build a Formula 1 type race car from scratch and have it on the road in under eight months. A group of student mechanical engineers is in the middle of such a project and expects to meet the deadline.
"We started in September with a clean screen. What we aim to do is by the middle of April, have a car up and running," says Dr Will Smith of the department of mechanical engineering at University College Dublin.
He is the director of UCD Racing, a team assembled to participate in an international design competition which involves building racing cars. The team includes 23 final-year undergraduates and four students completing masters in mechanical engineering.
The international program me, Formula Student, began four years ago under the auspices of the British Institute of Mechanical Engineering and the US Society of Automotive Engineering. This is Ireland's first involvement. The car will be one of 30 prepared by teams from the US, Britain, other European countries, Canada and Mexico, Dr Smith says.
The team's spirits were lifted yesterday by a visit from Gary Anderson, a Northern Irish expert who has designed cars for the Jordan and the Jaguar racing teams. He delivered a lecture on vehicle design but also provided a bit of free consultancy for the UCD team.
The team has used software packages to build a virtual car which is only now beginning to take shape. The "Ideas" package is used regularly by Formula 1 racing teams. It allows three-dimensional solid modelling and can calculate stresses on individual components.
Another does computational fluid dynamics which provides information on aerodynamic performance, drag analysis and how the car will move through air. A third provides "suspension and steering kinematics", which tells the designers how moving components will perform when in use.
The vehicle frame was only completed yesterday, Dr Smith says. "Our design process began in September and we didn't begin cutting tubes until February. We have a lot of manufacturing to do in March."
Almost everything has to be designed from scratch including the suspension, drive train, all linkages and driver controls. The students ditched the original carburettor and designed and built an electronic fuel-injection and management system to increase performance. They are doing emission-testing and trying to reduce engine friction by testing various lubricant combinations. The Honda 600 cc motorcycle engine is mounted on a test bed for performance assessment, work which proceeded in parallel to the overall vehicle design.
A huge amount will have to be done to have the car ready by April, Dr Smith acknowledges. It will be entered this July in an international Formula Student event in Birmingham. The student designers will put the vehicles through their paces, racing against the clock, testing road-holding characteristics on a skid pan and doing acceleration tests. The design will also be assessed by a panel of judges.
The plan is to have a car and driver which will weigh just 290 kg but will deliver 70 brake horsepower. "It will give us a power-to-weight ratio similar to a Porsche 911," Dr Smith says. "This is why keeping it light is so important. If we want to get the acceleration we have to get the mass down. The constraints are similar to Formula 1."
There is a price limit of just $35,000 for the finished car but if student costs are included, UCD will have invested between £70,000 and £80,000. He believes it will be money well spent. The students will have had a "tangible focus for the theoretical stuff they do", but Jordan Grand Prix will also be scouting for talent.