Friday, April 22, 2011

VIRTUAL SUPRA - Design Scrutiny - A Look Back

Just completing a draft dating back to Aug 2010 for the sake of documentation( of the return journey! ) 


After a series of delays and shocks , VIRTUAL Supra was ironically the first REAL thing of the competition.Teams were asked to submit their preliminary design reports before 16th august to the convener. All teams had to submit a declaration form that they will be using the given Maruti Suzuki Engine. 
           The preliminary design report should be 7 pages and should contain all three views of the vehicle.After submitting the PDR(Preliminary design report , we are eligible to attend VIRTUAL SUPRA. 
          Virtual Supra was held on 21st and 22nd of August 2010 in ANSYS  Office , Pune. All the teams were supposed to give a 10 min presentation which would be followed by question bombs.The 'screw'tinzing is done by a panel of judges who are veterans in the automobile industry.
  Only 5 are allowed to give the present during this event, so five of us from Inspired Karters Racing, Kartik Bagga, Rishi Bigghe, Shubham Dixit , Rohit Garg and myself packed our bags and headed to Pune. Our presentation was half done and remaining was in bits and pieces. As we stepped into the so called deluxe bus to Jaipur we could feel the tension of the competition. After indulging ourselves with sweets in Jaipur we boarded the train to amchi Mumbai . The train was awesome , furnished with new seats and curtains. Everything can't go well, can it? The power plugs were not working and that was enough for us to postpone our pending work. We slept well that night, something that would become a luxury few days later.As we neared Mumbai , good food (read pav bhaji) was the only thing in our minds. Finally we reached Mumbai and immediately took a local to dadar and then boarded a bus to Pune. The only highlight of the journey being Shubham aka Baba and Rishi laughing hysterically at Bhagam Bhag's PJs and everyone else in the bus smiling at them. After reaching Pune we walked down to Aundh Retreat. The rooms were great and everything felt like home


.Work started soon and we also had Kadvekar also gave a guest visit to our hotel and took us to a good restaurant. After sipping Cad b we were back in our hotel working on our  the presentation , trying to 'crack' Vinay's CFD analysis and making the MS project plan and all this continued till 4 in the morning. 




          We got up early in the morning and we were the first team to reach ANSYS office. The inaug was late and everything else was also late and we finally got our slot at 1 and we were allotted judge panel 1 and we entered the room with confidence( partly because the screwing judges were in panel 2). Bagga started off with the presentation quickly and before we could settle down , the question started raining. They were on braking and CFD .


The judge " What the equations you have considered? "
All of us were confused. Before we could think of some random equations the judge continued.
" Haven't you studied the basic equations?"
Baba with an embarrassed and confused look quickly went towards the board. We were explaining how we calculated the braking distance and then came the realization when the judge asked " How did you get that? What equations did you use?" Suddenly all of us knew what it was. Baba wrote the three equations on the board like a primary school teacher. The screwing did not stop there . We were again stuck when we presented our CFD analysis. 


"What kind of flow have you considered?"
 "ummm ...Laminar"
The person who was asking was from ANSYS and had probably done several years of CFD. We knew not to mess with him.
"The flow around the car will be turbulent. Why have you considered laminar ?"
" Sir... for a preliminary analysis we have considered laminar.. we will be doing further analysis"
He was not going to stop at that . "What is the equation for Reynolds Number?" Baba was already positioned at the blackboard . But his TP knowledge was only enough to get the numerator of the relation. " So Reynolds number doesn't depend on viscosity?" he questioned and then came the denominator. 


The rest of the presentation went smoothly with a few basic rulebook questions here and there. We  left ANSYS happy and with a sense of achievement. It was one of the smoothest presentations of Karters history.  




If you are thinking that we had happy ending , then let me tell what happened next. Our tatkal tickets for the return journey were in waiting list. Hoping that we would get atleast one seat , we packed our bags and headed to the station. 20 minutes to departure and we were still stuck in waiting list. We had to take waiting list tickets in sleeper class. The waiting list numbers were in the 500s and we dumped our asses into the crowded sleeper compartment. All I can remember from then on is getting squeezed ,stamped, pushed, pulled ,twisted and getting thrown around all over the compartment.Thanks to the 50 odd middle aged annoying women who were in the compartment, this was the last smiling pic we had in the journey.


We were left standing for the night. Bigghe and I were guarding the laptops while Baba and Tidda took care of the luggage. Bagga happily slept on the floor with his Ipod left to be taken by anyone. He was lucky that Bigghe spotted it first. Bigghe went on to fight with one of the women for the seat. I don't exactly remember what he uttered but it was damn funny. 


 Even after getting settled in  the  top berths during the day , the journey still had some entertainment left for us. This particular book caught Tidda's attention. 


  We reached back safely in one piece. Looking back now , it was definitely a trip to remember. 
























 "Nothing behind you matters." - Enzo Ferrari( and Bigghe as he made his way in the train)