dclafleur said:
Jaynen said:
So my new gig after 20 years in video games is working for EBSCO one of the main providers of data base and journal access for schools. The big gap with getting access to the material online is in terms of students not being familiar with information literacy which is the process of vetting, compiling, refining searches etc this a big focus for the educational sector right now
In grad school 12 years ago (Knowledge Management/Library Information Science) that was my counterpoint to patrons finding information online. So many were focused on the accuracy of information which I argued was already there or would come quickly, I was more concerned about clarity of information. The right information is worthless if the vocabulary is opaque or misunderstood. I was a big proponent of creating separate classes of tags/assets/information for embedding definitions in-line with a topic. Why bury everything in footnotes? Anyways this is a sidenote to the main discussion but it frustrates me to this day. I really love how clear this discussion has been in how the terms are being defined.
Quoting both of you to say the the distribution of information, and it's accuracy as well, is a fascinating problem both in car culture and in the real world. While I was writing out different sections of this I was searching for images to steal. I figured out that basically all of the information in the class is out there in some form if you have the ability to sort through the tons of junk that it's nested within. I'm not sure if that makes learning more or less accessible to be honest. Thanks for chiming in and I'm glad you've enjoyed this.
Not sure if SAE does referral bonuses, but the bossman approved and I'll be at the May 20 session in Greer. Thanks mazdeuce for bringing the discussion to the group. I'm looking forward to it!
In reply to morello159 :
That's rad. Send Angrycorvair a message to let him know. It will be cool to get your perspective of the east coast version of the school and also to see what you pull out of the class that I missed. Be sure to report back!
Just finished the east coast version of the class. A great three days at the office, for sure! I thoroughly enjoyed both the classroom content (information and delivery) and of course the in-vehicle exercises were a lot of fun. Thanks for the amax = mupeak sticker, I'll add it to the collection on my toolbox, haha.
I appreciated the breadth of topics covered, if it only served to whet my appetite for the more in-depth classes (what does my brake proportioning valve actually do in a transient environment? what does a "good" camber curve look like, how do you design it?) and the clarity with which the instructor is able to articulate some pretty complicated concepts. I was also most impressed with the ABS-off braking performance of the BMW cars - my experience in the past has been that most vehicles are very heavily biased towards one axle or the other. The BMW's would lock up front or rear first depending on vehicle loading - pretty neat.
I'm not sure I agree with the instructor's conviction about the terms "understeer" and "oversteer." I think we should make the distinction between under/oversteer the condition and the vehicle handling characteristic. I accept that a vehicle which exhibits understeer as a property of its handling characteristics can be defined as it was in the class (under steady state cornering, ie understeer gradient). But I'm also of the opinion that we can refer to the condition of understeer or oversteer as a relationship between the vehicle's steer angle and direction of travel. Steer angle > yaw angle = understeer condition; steer angle < yaw angle = oversteer. You can experience an oversteer condition in a vehicle that exhibits steady state understeer.
More to come... back to work!
Glad to hear that you liked it (and the sticker) Let it roll around in your head a few days and come back and type more. There is so much information that I'm still thinking about it months later.
To the instructors, this is all that matters.*
*1. That’s not true at all. We are there to teach, and all we care about is that our students learn. The autocross results are for internal trash-talk until the next session. 2. yes, this is 3-run average. I think I was 6th on single fastest raw time, but my times were remarkably consistent and all 3 were clean.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
James and Erik greatly appreciated the shirts, and everyone got a good chuckle from the stickers. Tom and Ed weren’t there this time, so they’ll get their shirts in October.
Did you get a picture of the single fastest run chart? That one cone killed my average!
The braking module also gave me some thoughts about my own car and how I can improve its performance. I have a brake proportioning valve on the Miata. I am currently limited in adjusting it though - I would like more rear braking in a straight line, because the fronts lock up much earlier than the rears, but any more rear brake bias makes trail braking a little unstable. In a discussion I had with a Pagid brake engineer, he mentioned that the rear brake pressure diagram shown in class is in reality a hysteresis loop, and adding "more rear bias" can also slow the release of pressure to the rear, leading to the trail-braking instability I experience. I didn't have a chance to ask about this in the class, but if I end up taking the follow up braking courses I would be interested in diving further into that. Electronic brake force distribution is awesome, because it's continuously changing bias to adjust to the conditions - a far better solution than the static brake bias adjustment you get with a prop valve.
Another concept I would like to wrap my head further around is the difference between my car and the "recommended" setup from 949racing. I have 800lbs/500lbs f/r spring rates with a stock front swaybar and no rear swaybar. Using some publicly available miata calculators, that puts my understeer gradient at a similar level to the recommended setup with a 1.25" hollow Racing beat front bar and a stock rear bar. So, what differences would I experience? Certainly less roll, but is that beneficial? Would corner-exit traction suffer? I'm at about 220whp in my Miata. I currently experience a bit of push through lower speed corners (turn 7 at road atlanta, for example), and instability in higher speed corners (think turn 5 at Road Atlanta) - the opposite of what you want. I'm thinking some more toe out in the front and toe in on the rear might help, but would overall roll stiffness effect either of those if the ratio front/rear remains the same?
In reply to morello159 :
Are the corner springs different between your setup and the recommended setup, or is the difference limited to bars?
reviving this zombie thread to say "a max still equals mu peak" and also to say that there are still seats available for the March 25-27 offering of this class at BMW Performance Center West in Thermal CA.
SAE Applied Vehicle Dynamics Seminar
I really need to convince the bean counters to let me take this.
Bragging rights secured until May.
The new model is faster than the outgoing model. I know where I left a few tenths.
There are still a few seats available for the September 2024 offering of this seminar, at the BMW Performance Center in Greer SC. Come on down and GET SOME!!!
https://www.sae.org/learn/content/c0414/
I'm looking at you, Tom Suddard. 😎
