School of Mines to Host 2007 Baja SAE Competition -- Released April 11, 2007
On May 23-26, 2007, one hundred teams will converge at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City, S.D., to compete in the 2007 Baja SAE Competition. Teams will travel to the School of Mines from as close as North Dakota and Iowa to as far away as South Korea, France, Brazil, Mexico and Africa.
The object of the competition is to provide SAE student members with a challenging project that involves the planning and manufacturing tasks found when introducing a new product to the consumer industrial market. Teams compete against one another to have their design accepted for manufacture by a fictitious firm. Students must function as a team to not only design, build, test, promote and race a vehicle within the limits of the rules, but also to generate financial support for their project and manage their educational priorities.
Each year, the School of Mines team designs a new frame, suspension, steering, braking and drive train system. Performance is the goal, keeping all the systems as light as possible while building them to withstand the abuse they will be put through during the race. After the team approves a design, prototypes are produced and tested to discover their weaknesses and shortcomings. After testing, the students build the car in-house. Competition rules stipulate that the cars have to be manufactured in-house – no professional companies can be sourced to build the frame or major systems. The team’s build process typically starts in December and continues until March, leaving about one to two months for testing and tuning of the systems.
The competition consists of two main segments: static and dynamic events. Static events include a sales presentation, design judging and vehicle production cost. Dynamic events encompass two of the three days of the event, and include a hill climb, acceleration runs, rock-crawl, maneuverability course and a four-hour endurance race.
