For the past few years, the Aberdeen MGOC has had a close association with the Team Aberdeen University (TAU) Racing Team. The team was established in 2007 by a group of 10 undergraduate engineers of various disciplines at the University of Aberdeen. The team’s goal each year is to design and build a single seat race car to compete at Silverstone in the IMechE Formula Student competition.

The team now has over 50 team members across a variety of disciplines, from engineering to business. The society teaches team members to apply engineering methods to a real-life engineering project, allowing the students’ designs to be produced and implemented on the car. Furthermore, the project demands many interpersonal skills - including team management, effective communication and scheduling.

Until the COVID pandemic hit, the team gave us an annual presentation on the latest developments with the car as well as updating us on their results; they also displayed the car at our annual Drum event.  Their display is always a huge crowd puller and the standard of workmanship and preparation of the car never fails to impress. 

Sadly, due to COVID restrictions, the team have not been able to undertake any fabrication for the past year and have instead concentrated on designing a number of improvements to the car which they plan to implement as soon as the restrictions allow.

COVID also meant that they were unable to give us the traditional face to face presentation at Kippie Lodge but undeterred, they kindly agreed to update us with a virtual presentation using Microsoft Teams. 

This virtual presentation took place on 1st April and despite one or two initial communication issues, a good number of members logged in to the presentation which, despite the limitations was highly informative and up to their usual high standard.   

The team is divided up into a number of ‘departments’ and the following Department Heads gave us an insight into planned developments within their area of expertise:

• Aidan Belton-schure  (Technical Director)
• Sam Huntington (Co-Head of Composites and Aerodynamics)
• Erika Farkas (Head of Electrical and Electronic Systems)
• Craig Johnston (Head of Chassis)
• Peter Eagles (Head of Suspension)
• Jacob Wellsbury (Head of Engine)

Plans for the future include a rear wing to increase downforce, revised electronic throttle assembly, a front anti-roll bar and longer term, a switch from the current spaceframe chassis to a hybrid chassis consisting of a monocoque front end attached to a spaceframe rear.

A screenshot of how the presentation looked on screen together with small selection of slides is shown below,

Each year, some members of the team graduate and leave so the membership changes regularly and it is always interesting to see the different ideas that new members bring.   

A series of questions followed all of which were answered expertly by the team – this has an added benefit for them because one element of the IMechE Formula Student competition is to present to a panel of experts, so this gives them some practice in the art of communication…. albeit in our case not to a panel of experts!

Our thanks to all members of TAU for an interesting evening and we look forward to hopefully welcoming them to our Drum show – COVID restrictions permitting.