Text: Anusha B
Krishna Institute of Engineering and Technologies (KIET) bagged the SUPRA SAEINDIA 2015 award an event for budding automobile engineering students to unleash their potential hands-on talent in designing, manufacturing and assembling formula type race cars. Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) India is an engineering and scientific society invigorating the mobility industry and is the largest affiliate of SAE International. Maruti Suzuki India Ltd extends its seamless support as a title sponsor consecutively for the 4th time with fellow sponsors Bharath Petroleum Corporation, Bosch, Altair, Ansys, Roots, ARAI,Viper Hobbies and Canara Bank.
This event is an ardent initiative to energise the budding brains and tap their automotive brains to constantly innovate and bring out the changes on reduction in weight of the vehicle, fuel economy and increased efficiency in transmission. C V Raman, Executive Director, Engineering, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. said, “Being the market leader, Maruti Suzuki has always paid extra attention to engineering and we will continue with our initiatives to provide students the right kind of exposure to further polish their engineering skills. I believe that there is an abundance of talent pool in our country so I hope to see more students participating and gaining as much experience as possible from these events to develop their abilities from the opportunities that lie ahead.”
The participants are expected to create a virtual design, prototype and test their own formula type race cars. The success of a formula type race car has to cross over multiple stages in which students have to present and defend their design virtually followed by actual construction of the vehicle. This event shapes future engineers gearing them up with the vehicle building mandates like aesthetics in design, choice of parts, structure design and modeling, safety, fabrication and testing. These steps will ignite the tender brains with the practical industry knowledge and assure the industries with market-ready professionals. The students will be conferred guidance by industry experts who in turn source the required knowledge and skills from the technical experts of SAEINDIA. The intent behind the event is to impart mobility knowledge to the students.
The selection process involves 3 different stages. The tests conducted to report the vehicle standards are static,dynamic and endurance. In static test the design of the vehicle is analysed stage by stage and checked on its conformity to rule articulations. Dynamic testing checks on the durability, autocross against the clock and brake testing. The final testing is endurance test where the safety aspects are kept in the forefront. In the different stages of testing all the attributes necessary for branding the cars are evaluated and assessed. All the attributes are tested and the students will be conferred awards on every attribute. For an instance, emission values of the car will be computed and the car which emanates less CO2 particulates will bag the award and the safety aspects of the car will be adjudged and the car which holds maximum safety features like conforming the braking standards and steering standards will bag the safety award. The performance testing will tag, may be another car in the row as the best and the award will be bestowed for the tagged car. The summation of the values of all the attributes considered for testing will badge a particular car balancing all the figures as the ‘SUPRA SAEINDIA 2015’ car and will be honored with the prestigious award.
The 4th edition of Maruti Suzuki SUPRA SAEINDIA 2015 competition, which recently concluded at Madras Motor Race Track, Sriperumbudur, Chennai saw 167 colleges enrolled for this event with 110 colleges shortlisted to ride in the race. Out of 110 colleges, 93 colleges were on-board competing in the event. The hit rate is relatively high juxtaposing the previous years. Speaking on the occasion, Prashant K Banerjee, Convener, SUPRA SAE INDIA 2015 and Head – Homologation and Product Evaluation, Tata Motors said, “It gives us great satisfaction to see that over the years teams are maturing, which is now getting shown in some of the very impressive prototypes that they have brought here. We hope this event will continue to enable these bright young engineers to discover their passion for automotive engineering and motivate them to choose it as their career.”
There are lots of grievances industries face to tap the right talent from the market as majority of the graduates are unemployable. The reason being they were not imparted practical training in their respective areas. Banerjee said, SUPRA SAE India like events shatter the barrier hitherto the industry has encountered and map the industrial needs with the institutes offering the knowledge. Not to over emphasise the Indian brains are vested with innate technical skills and it is that fine tuning with necessary inputs will do wonders. “Mechanics without electronics is unimaginable in this era. Hence with this exuberating technical talent we could shape our strength and emerge as one of the developed countries by 2020, added Banerjee.
Commenting on th electric vehicle race Dr S Thirumalini, Head- Engineering Education Board of SAE INDIA and Head of Mechanical Engineering at Amrita Viswa Vidyapeetam University remarked that “Virtual testing is likely to be held for electric vehicles in the forthcoming INTEC event and with the results satiating the requisites the electric vehicles will roll on the roads.” Necessary plans for conducting the electric vehicle race which supports the green environment are in place. With all these invigorating steps in place India could soon be unfolded as a technologically innovative market and boastfully flag our DNA coded India as the number one technology expert.
