Engineering students from K.J. Somaiya College of Engineering launched its latest car ORI 2011 – ‘Aeton’, the official entry of Orion Racing India at the renowned Formula Student Germany Competition, 2011. Aeton is the name of one of Pluto’s horses, usually rendered ‘swift as an eagle’. The car was unveiled at the auditorium of K.J. Somaiya College of Engineering, Vidyavihar, Mumbai on April 7, at 6.30pm.
Official press release:
April 13, 2011, Engineering students from K.J. Somaiya College of Engineering launched its latest car ORI 2011 – ‘Aeton’, the official entry of Orion Racing India at the renowned Formula Student Germany Competition, 2011. Aeton is the name of one of Pluto’s horses, usually rendered ‘swift as an eagle’. The car will be unveiled at the auditorium of K.J. Somaiya College of Engineering, Vidyavihar, Mumbai at 6.30pm.
Orion Racing India (ORI) is a student team of enthusiastic undergraduate engineers from
K. J. Somaiya College of Engineering, Mumbai, India, determined to get the most out of their educational experience. Through passion and commitment, students collaborated as a team to design, build and race an open-wheeled formula style race car that competes in the annual Formula SAE competition.
Teamwork, leadership, problem solving skills as well as engineering and business skills are promoted throughout the entire process of designing and building the race car. The design process gives team members, as well as the sponsors an excellent opportunity to network with each other, resulting in beneficial relationships for all involved.
“A project of this magnitude requires a significant amount of funding and each year students approach a multitude of companies to obtain sponsorship for the project. This year, the ASK Group, a diversified financial services group, has come forward as title sponsors and made a magnanimous contribution towards the project, without which the project would not have been possible” says Rehan Netarwala, a student of K.J. Somaiya College of engineering who has put in immense effort for this project to become successful.
Since its inception in 2007, ORI has made 4 race cars that have competed annually at the Formula Student Germany.
• In 2009, ORI’s car was adjudged ‘the most successful Asian car to participate’.
• In 2010 ORI won the 3rd place in the ‘Cost Report’ event.
• In 2011, after a rigorous qualification process, ORI successfully qualified for a 5th consecutive year at Formula Student Germany.
After an entire year of hard-work and toil the team displayed the ORI 2011- ‘Aeton’. Special softwares like Solidworks, Catia, Susprog 3D and Photoworks360 have been used to aid the design and analysis of the vehicle. The whole car was initially designed on the computer showing the actual room for error. These latest technologies also enabled the calculation of forces and torques experienced by a component under various circumstances when in use on the car.
The breakthrough that this team has been able to accomplish is the study and implementation of composites in the car. The use of carbon fibre and glass fibre has lent many advantages which the previous cars did not possess such as weight reduction and greater strength to weight ratio. The electronics team designed and fabricated a data acquisition system in-house which will assist the team in analysing the vehicles data during testing. As ORI gets ready to launch its fifth car, the team is confident of improving its past ranking and making a grand impression on the international stage.
About Formula SAE:
The Formula SAE competition is held by the Society of Automotive Engineers, and is the biggest engineering design competition in the world. It is a worldwide competition, with events held in the United States (2), UK, Australia, Germany, Japan, Brazil and Italy. The competition comprises seven events split up into two categories wiz: Static events and Dynamic events. The events include Cost and Manufacturing Analysis, Business Plan Presentation, Design, Acceleration, Skid Pad, Autocross, Fuel Economy, and Endurance.
Competition link: www.formulastudent.de
About Somaiya Vidyavihar: (www.somaiya.edu)
Somaiya Vidyavihar, founded in 1959 by Padmabhushan (late) Shri K.J. Somaiya, is part of the INRs 800 crore Somaiya Group, with diversified interests in Sugar, Power, Industrial Alcohol, Bulk Organic chemicals, Bio-organic fertilizers and dehydrated food products. The core values of our Founder, namely Integrity, Honesty, Philanthropy and Social Awareness, are strongly ingrained in every thread of the group fabric.
Somaiya Vidyavihar was set up with the aim to provide value based holistic education to the youth of India. Today the Vidyavihar campus has evolved into a sprawling 65 acre complex at Ghatkopar (a central suburb of Mumbai) encompassing 34 institutions, 27000 students and 2000 faculty. The complex has all the infrastructure to nurture a quality education environment. Over the past six decades, Somaiya Vidyavihar has generated a considerable amount of goodwill amongst the community and is now aiming to transform itself into a “world class global education centre”.