For the past six years, TEAM MAVRICK, a team of students from different disciplines of Finolex Academy of Management & Technology, Ratnagiri participated in the SAE Baja Design Challenge 2021. The team competed against the top engineering institute students across India and the world.
SAE BAJA Design Challenge is a competition run by the Society Design and Build of Automotive Engineers (SAE).The goal of this competition is to apply technical skills to a hands-on designing project. Teams of students from colleges across India design and build small off-road racing vehicles and compete against each other at annual conferences. By simulating real-world design scenarios, the students learn the necessary skills that will help them to become successful engineers and professionals.
The season 2020-21 started in the month of March 2020. The students of our institute formed a team and worked to build the best all-terrain vehicle. They aimed to be the national champions. Team Maverick set the goal in the early stages of the competition and kept the workflow accordingly to achieve their goal. But countrywide lockdown forced Team Maverick to stop these activities in mid-march. The conditions were not previously experienced by the team and so it was difficult to work virtually and remotely via digital channels for meetings and discussions.
An uncontrollable COVID outbreak in the month of May affected the layout of the BAJA SAE competition for this year. The competition changed its face into a virtual competition consisting of static presentations and virtual dynamic events. The competition was divided into two stages. In the first stage, the team presented the design presentation virtually and participated in a quiz round which was based on vehicle dynamics. The second stage included virtual presentations and a dynamic simulation round. Dynamic simulation round was the new challenge for the team as the team had to learn a Germany based simulation software named IPG Carmaker and simulate and tune over vehicle within that in a short period. In addition to this, Team Maverick accepted that challenge by BAJA to design 4WD/AWD vehicle and designed a 4WD vehicle for the 1st time.
The team had daily meetings on virtually to interact with the other team members and to get an overview of all the tasks throughout the season. As the team approached the event dates, the team practised the presentation on virtual platforms like zoom to get used to the platforms and avoid any problems during the competition time. Team Mavrick learned and simulated the vehicle for dynamic scenarios in the IPG Carmaker software within a short time.
The second phase of the competition was conducted between 21st to 25th April 2021. The team completed all the final presentations and virtual dynamic events as per the provided slots. The season wrapped up with a great success grabbing below ranks in the competition:
PRELIMINARY ROUND ACHIEVEMENTS
| Automotive Engineering Online Quiz | AIR-3 |
| AWD/4WD system | AIR-5 |
| Presentation Round | AIR-33 |
| Overall Rank | AIR-13 |
EVENT WISE RANKS OUT OF 150 TEAMS
| Manufacturing | AIR 57 |
| Cost | AIR 51 |
| Acceleration | AIR 23 |
| Brakes | AIR 14 |
| Manoeuvrability | AIR 12 |
| Gradeability | AIR 49 |
| Susp.& tract. | AIR 23 |
| All-terrain | AIR 22 |
| Overall Dynamics Rank | AIR 15 |
| Overall Rank | AIR 34 |
This journey wouldn’t be a success without the precious support of the institute, faculty, parents and continuous support of alumni and their guidance. Prof. Sachin Gurav, Faculty Advisor, coordinated the event under the valuable guidance of Dr . MilindKirkire, HOD Mechanical Engineering Department and DrKaushal Prasad,Principal, FAMT.
Mavrik Team Members 2020-2021
ShrikantSawant (Captain),
GovindBhaidkar (Vice-captain),
TejasBandbe (Team Manager),
Team members – Chirag Andhari, Pratik Deogharkar, Ganesh Desai, RamchandraParab, AjinkyaYadav, Ninad Joshi, SmitMetar, ChinmayBandarkar, PriteshNarkar, SurajGavit, AtharvaMahale, YashChavan, ChaitanyaPatankar, AjinkyaTikekar, Prasad Pawar, NishantWasave, Ajay Karmarkar, SanketSargar, Tanaya Patil, Shravan Mhapankar, Gandhali Chaugule, and Advait Kher.
