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EIR interview with A/P KH SEAH, Faculty Advisor of NUS FSAE (Aug 2006)
Q1. Prof Seah, congratulations to you and your 2006 NUS FSAE team on the excellent results at the recent international competition in USA. It is impressive that this year’s NUS FSAE race car’s overall position was 27th out of 140, which is a great achievement, up from 58th and 77th the last two years. It was also the only Asian team to make it to the design semi-finals. Could you tell us more about this exciting competition?
A. The FSAE (Formula-Society of Automotive Engineers) is probably the largest scale engineering competition in the world, with thousands of students participating annually from all over the world. People always think that this is like a Formula One race. In Formula One racing, the drivers are dedicated to driving in just one event, whereas the FSAE competition is really an engineering design competition which has a different emphasis. There are many parts to the competition, comprising over ten mandatory requirements (structural equivalency calculations, impact attenuation calculations, design report, cost report, safety, five-second emergency egress of driver, 60 degree tilt test, technical inspection, brake test, sound test, marketing presentation, design judging, cost evaluation, etc.) and four dynamic events (acceleration, skidpad, autocross and a 22-km endurance event, the latter including fuel economy). In Formula One, they have race engineers doing all the designing and customising of the engine and suspension to suit the drivers’ needs, they have dedicated and well-equipped workshops to fabricate their cars, the publicity is handled by a professional publicity team, and the sponsorship is handled by a professional marketing team.
 Our FSAE team members have to do everything on their own. They have to design, produce, and, test the car, train as race drivers, organise the publicity events, do demos and displays, and garner sponsorship - in fact they are responsible for every task from beginning to end. At the competition, in between the dynamic events, they have to alter the suspension settings, the engine mapping, steering, tyre pressure, etc. in preparation for the next event, since each event is vastly different from the previous one. Very often they need to take calculated risks, since an error in judgment could result in severe damage to the car and injury to the driver. Short of a Le Mans-style 24 hour race, the dynamic events cover every nuance in racing. So the FSAE competition is really comprehensive and trains the team members in all aspects of race car engineering. We never expected to be ranked so highly at the competition. I have uploaded a diary of events for each of the five days of the competition on our FSAE website: http://serve.me.nus.edu.sg/fsae/diary06.html
Q2. What do you think impressed the judges at the design competition, so much so that your team was one of the 15 chosen for the semi-finals out of the 140 registered teams?
A.  Frankly, we are still nowhere near the standards of the top teams. They have high-tech stuff on their cars which we can only dream of at this moment. Since we lack this WOW factor on our rather straightforward car design, I believe the judges simply couldn’t find anything seriously wrong with our car. It was well thought out, everything fitted nicely together albeit without any frills, and our team members were able to answer most of the questions put to them. Their thorough knowledge of how our car works must have impressed the judges. Race car design involves mainly fundamentals of mechanical engineering, basic principles of motor racing, and loads of creativity to solve problems not found in textbooks.
Q3. With such impressive results this year, do you think we can do even better next year?
A. The possibility is always there. Our 2006 race car is far from perfect. It has many problems which we either could not solve or had no time to solve. After the competition, I re-checked our calculations and discovered quite a few errors which we never detected before. It was fortunate that nothing untoward happened to our car while we were there. There is no perfect race car anyway. Everything is a compromise, hence we hope to do even better next year. Nevertheless, whatever the competition results, this project is very educational in many ways.
Q4. Could you elaborate on the educational value of this project?
A. In this project, students learn how to conceptualise a race car, design every single component, and finally manufacture all the components with their own hands using machine tools and welding equipment. In addition, they also need to learn how to package the components in the smallest space possible to make the race car extremely compact. Moreover, they need to know how to do a cost budget for the use of material, manpower, time and finances. When the car is up and running, they need to also know how to make modifications, tune the car for maximum performance, and do immediate maintenace like repairing broken parts. As part of the promotion of the car project, the team is coached to handle publicity, speak at press launches, entertain the sponsors of the project, and be present at road shows to answer queries. All these require an astute ability to communicate and relate to the public. It is a very holistic project that trains the team members not only in the many aspects of engineering but also equips them with lifeskills not taught in the classroom.
Q5. What does it mean to design a car?
A. In our case, design does not mean making nice drawings of the shape of the  car. It means deciding what components get on the car, what shapes these components take, what materials they should be made of, how big they should be based on stress and strain requirements, and how to fit it all together in the most compact way. It also involves calculating all the forces experienced by each individual component, when the car is static, when it is accelerating, braking, turning a corner, going over a bump, etc. It is basically mechanical engineering and not aesthetics.
Q6. Now that we have such advanced computer technology, do the team members rely a lot on computer software to design the car?
A. There are indeed very advanced computer software that can help us see if the parts we design can fit together, as well as assess the stresses on every part of the car. However, there are limitations because sometimes certain geometries and boundary conditions cannot be perfectly simulated on computer. Hence, I still insist that all my team members must understand the fundamental principles of mechanical engineering as applied to the individual components and to the race car as a whole. If a component were to fail or malfunction, there is no computer software that can do the troubleshooting. Only the team who designed the car can troubleshoot and diagnose the problem, and they need to use engineering knowledge in order to do it. That is why I invest so much time teaching them all the fundamental principles of engineering and remain contactable round the clock in case they need help.
Q7. Can students from Departments other than Mechanical Engineering (ME) be involved in this project?
A. Of course. There are electronic gadgets on the car, such as the display, the data acquisition system, and the telemetry system which sends signals from car to pit and vice-versa. All these fall within the realm of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). The chassis is clearly relevant to Civil Engineering (CE). Although I can recruit students from these Departments for FSAE, it is administratively easier for me to use my own ME students to do these jobs if I can find competent ones, for the simple reason that in the ME department we have a built-in system in which those who work on the FSAE team can earn modular credits in their third and final years, as well as during the vacation between these two years. Having said that, over the years I have had team members from the CE and ECE Depts who proved to be very competent and hardworking. Still, I don’t see how I can train a medical student to be a race car engineer.
Q8. Are there a lot of variations in race car design?
A. People always think that all race cars are the same, ie. four wheels, one powerful engine, standard springs and dampers, etc. There are in fact many ways to design each component, and infinite permutations when you put all the parts together, all with very different results in performance. I believe that genius will always find plenty of variety within a fixed framework. The great German composer Beethoven wrote 32 piano sonatas, each of which is unique and distinct from the rest. Just the way the wheels are mounted on the car is a huge area of research. Our team members have to decide what is optimum for each individual part as well as when assembled together as a complete car, all keeping within the cost restrictions laid down by the FSAE rules and without depleting our FSAE coffers. In this sense, we are very restricted compared to Formula One teams, whose race cars can cost US$10 million each. The headache of every race car engineer is how to package everything within such a confined space, and how to lighten the car as much as possible, yet without compromising on reliability.
Q9. Sounds like an awful lot for the students to learn in such a short time, in order to build a race car without any prior experience.
A. That’s the wonder of it all. These guys start off with hardly any knowledge in race cars and racing when I recruit them at the start of their second  undergraduate year. After working on the project for some time, they end up learning so much that by the time they reach their final year, they become experts in their respective areas of responsibility. The competition lasts only a few days which is the glamorous part, but the training of the team is all year round which is the tough part. There is a Chinese proverb that says you need to train soldiers for 1000 days before they can be used for just a short period （养兵千日，用在一刻）. That’s why I recruit my FSAE team members in their second year and train them for 1000 days till their graduation. Also, in order to perform on stage for just three minutes, you need to train for three years (台上三分钟, 台下三年功). On graduation, they are highly sought after by companies outside. After all, how many engineering graduates can boast having built a few race cars from scratch? I derive immense satisfaction in seeing each of them progress through such a steep learning curve. Every team member needs to thoroughly understand what is going on in the car. In class, their mistakes will cost them just exam marks, but on the race car their mistakes can cost a life. Simply copying someone else’s design without understanding the details is dangerous. One anonymous Indy car engineer once said “We cover up our wings and dampers when the car is in the pit because I don’t want others to copy our set-up and kill themselves.”
Q10. Will it help if you invited race car experts from overseas to teach the team rather than doing it all by yourself?
A. Of course, this would expedite matters. However it is very expensive to pay experts for their lessons and also their plane fares. Every year, we barely have enough money to build the car, let alone engage experts to teach us. All these years, we have been doing it the cheap but slow and hard way of learning everything ourselves. On hindsight, this is a blessing in disguise, because it forces us to be independent and to thoroughly grasp the principles of race car engineering. It also ensures that the project is sustainable, since we are not dependant on outsiders for our knowledge. So long as I can recruit a handful of dedicated and passionate students every year who want to do this project, with sufficient funding there is no reason why we can’t build a pretty competitive and reliable car.
Q11. How did this race car project end up as such an important part of the engineering curriculum in the first place?
A. Like most of the significant scientific inventions in history, it started by accident. It was never planned. In 2001, a few of my third year students, under the leadership of their classmate Peter Ho Yew Chi, formed a team to build cars and go-karts at night. They invited me to be their project supervisor. Our nocturnal activities were known only to the technicians in the workshop whose machine tools we were using. It did not occur to me then to tell anyone about what we were up to, since I did not expect anyone to take interest in such a dirty and greasy hobby with no relevance to our niche research areas. Even my Head of Department, Prof Chou Siow Kiang, was in the dark. On 7 Feb 2003 our first car made its maiden run at 4.17 am while the rest of the world was sound asleep. The following month, we were suddenly invited to display our race car at the annual NUS Open House when another exhibit from the Engineering Faculty was pulled out at the very last minute. The car impressed President SR Nathan, who was also our NUS Chancellor. He was surprised to see a locally-made car. Prof Chou Siaw Kiang immediately saw the great potential of the car project as an effective educational tool for our ME students, especially since it was so practical and involved design and innovation. He decided that we should incorporate it into our Mechanical Engineering (ME) curriculum. The rest is history.
Q12. Indeed it must be very educational to build a car from scratch.
A. That’s not all. Since we have no car factory in Singapore, we have no place to  borrow diagnostic equipment from. So whatever diagnostic equipment we need we will have to design and build ourselves. It is way too expensive to buy them from overseas. Things like the oven for fabricating our composites, the dyno for measuring our engine torque and horsepower, camber gauges, bump steer gauges, chassis torsional rigidity test jigs, leveling devices, electronic lap timers and counters, tachometers, oil pressure sensors, temperature sensors, gear shift sensors, etc. have all been designed and built by the team members over the years. This in itself is an educational exercise. It is a form of problem based learning, since they need to first identify the problem, and then find a way to solve it using limited resources. A lot of our own diagnostic tools were made from scrap material found in the labs and workshops, all at minimal cost. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Q13. As a pedagogue, you must find the project very fulfilling.
A. Yes, I find it extremely fulfilling to handle such a project, mainly because I get to supervise a group of passionately enthusiastic team members whom I selected myself. In general I enjoy teaching, but I find it especially rewarding to teach students who are keen to learn for the sake of knowledge and not for exam grades. I feel very privileged to be allowed to choose my twelve disciples. I am also immensely grateful to the University, the Engineering Faculty, and my Head of Department Prof Lim Seh Chun for giving me and the team the liberty to build the car the way we like to. This shows the complete trust they have in us. Without this confidence, the project will simply be stifled. I will never be able to do a proper job if I am not given such freedom. I am not sure if this is just my own human nature or the inherent nature of the project. A bird cannot fly if you tie up its wings.
Q14. Do all those in the team have very high CAP scores?
A. Not necessarily. For this project to be successful, I need students who are good in engineering, entrepreneurship, innovativeness, managerial skills, discipline, integrity, and not students with just high CAP scores. Character is just as important. They need to be honest and own up to their mistakes as soon as possible. If they hide their mistakes, these could be life-threatening, especially in motorsports. Our university exams do not test such virtues, since they are mainly sit-down exams taken within a two-hour period, covering a very narrow range of topics. Real life is infinitely broader than that. In FSAE, the team members need to source for raw materials, figure out how to process them into parts that will fit on the car, decide how to package the whole car, plan the time schedule, diagnose problems that crop up before and after the car is completed, troubleshoot problems that they never imagined, and “never say die”. All these have no correlation with our exam system. This project will die a natural death if I simply recruit the students in my ME class with the highest CAP scores.
Q15. Will there ever come a time when there is nothing left to learn in this project?
A. No, never. Every car is different, with different problems to solve. All our four cars so far have very different problems. And we have never wanted to keep the same design of an old car because after building each car, we invariably discover so many things wrong with it. Some mistakes surface only when we test it on the ground or at the competition itself. I will be kept on my toes until the day I retire. There are some problems that the boys have been struggling with for years and are yet to come up with a solution. But the end result is that they become experts in that area, even though there is no perfect solution. A Chinese proverb says, if a man has been sick for a long time, he can become a great doctor (久病成名医). After all these years, I am still madly in love with the project, because of the endless challenges which we encounter. Every new car presents a new set of problems with new possibilities, just like playing chess or soccer.
Q16. So when the car is finally assembled, is that the climax of the whole exercise?
A. Far from it. Even if every component were perfectly designed and fabricated, there is no certainty that the car will run when assembled. This is a prototype  car with no precedent. Hence nobody can predict how it will turn out. Many things can go wrong, such that the car might simply not run. This is real life engineering. Even after the car runs properly, there are so many adjustments to do on the car to bring it up to competition standard. And even after we have calculated all the suspension parameters and set up the car perfectly, when we actually test drive it, many unexpected problems crop up. Remember this car has to compete against 139 other cars. It is not built for a leisurely Sunday cruise. I suppose the climax will be when we eventually complete the grand finale of the FSAE competition in USA, which is the 22 km endurance race. That’s when we take our traditional group photo and I reward the boys with dinner in a steak house for all their hard work over the years.
Q17. How do the team members cope with the pressure of building one brand new car every year?
A. From 2001 to 2004, when nobody knew what we were up to, it was not pressurizing at all. We took our time in building cars and go-karts. That’s why  the first car took us two years to build. But from April 2004 onwards, we got sponsorship from within and without NUS. That’s when we started to feel the pressure. Once we started receiving money from sponsors, we had an obligation to build one car per year and go for the competition. (Not all participating universities compete once a year since it is really taxing and draining.) Oftentimes, I thought we would never make it for the May competition, seeing that so many things were going wrong with the car even as late as March or April. However, my teams have always persevered with a “never say die” attitude, and we have been competing successfully all these years. That’s why I can only accept team members who have great perseverance in the face of extreme difficulty. They must perform against all odds, come hell or high water. Those who can’t cope with the pressure drop out on their own, even though they may be car enthusiasts. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.
Q18. Sounds like a lot of work going on behind the scenes.
A. What you see on the car is the crystallized result of plenty of blood, sweat and tears. Johannes Brahms was a prolific composer but he allowed only a quarter of his output to be finally published. He treated the rest as his personal educational exercises and made bonfires out of them. He worked for twenty years on his first symphony before finally publishing it. Similarly, we try out many things concerning the design of the race car and its components before finally allowing the best and most promising option to be installed on the car. Even then, after the competition we invariably discover things that are still wrong with the car. If building a prototype race car was that easy, we would not be the only participating FSAE team from this region after so many years.
Q19. Since we don’t have any automobile or motorsports culture in Singapore, where did you get your qualifications to teach race car engineering?
A. Since we don’t have any automobile or motorsports culture in Singapore, where did you get your qualifications to teach race car engineering? All my knowledge on this topic comes from my personal hands-on experience. I used to love tinkering with cars when I was young. My father was a car mechanic in his younger days. As a boy, I loved watching him work on cars and discuss car problems with his mechanic friends in Teochew. Before reaching my teens, I already had some fundamental knowledge of how a car works. As my father was driving, I used to “drive” next to him, grabbing an imaginary steering wheel and imagining what was going on in the engine and transmission system. It must have been this early exposure that got me interested in mechanical engineering. Working as a mechanical engineer in the Public Works Department (now called CPG) before joining NUS also gave me exposure to the real world of practical engineering. Ironically, I could not afford a car until I was almost thirty when I started working in NUS and took a car loan. Needless to say, I eagerly engineered it to my liking. My father used to shout at me “Make sure you know how to put it back together again.” As for racing, I had no prior experience at all. Watching Formula One does not automatically qualify one to supervise such a project, in the same way as watching a violinist play does not qualify one to hold masterclasses for violinists. So I had to do a lot of self-study. It was a very slow process because I was learning together with my students on the job. But then the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step ( 千里之行, 始于足下 ). It was a blessing that my first team leader Peter Ho Yew Chi was pretty experienced in race car engineering and motorsports. Even as his supervisor, I had to learn the basics from him. Some people may find this embarassing, but I don’t see anything wrong with that. After all, I’m the one benefitting. In Chinese we say 不耻下问, which means there is nothing shameful in consulting a junior.
Q20. Finally, I have a rather personal question to ask you. Do you know why Peter Ho approached you to supervise the FSAE project?
A. I believe he wanted the project to continue after he graduated, and he trusted that I would propagate the project without quitting halfway. Moreover, I  was teaching all the relevant modules like workshop practice, mechanical design, manufacturing technology, and material selection. For sure, this project is not a normal one and the average man in the street will not be willing to invest time and effort in it, especially since it is done mainly after office hours. Peter must have seen that I love dealing with cars and practical engineering. He used to refer to our group as a “bunch of mad men”, for who in the world would be test driving race cars after midnight in our empty NUS car parks? He told me that apart from me, he could not find another Prof who speaks the same language. I suppose it simply boils down to common interest. That’s why we always have so much to chat about. I still remember one midnight telephone discussion on the effects of brake caliper positions which lasted a few hours! In Chinese there is a saying 久逢知己千杯少, 话不投机半句多 which means that when one finally meets a friend of similar interest, even a thousand cups of tea are not enough for conversation, whereas for two people who have nothing in common, even half a sentence is too much.
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