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The team, DJS Kronos India of Dwarkadas Jivanlal Sanghvi College of Engineering located in Vile Parle (Mumbai), secured third position worldwide and first in India in BAJA SAE International (Arizona), USA. DJS Kronos is an engineering project team consisting of 40 undergraduate engineering students from Dwarkadas J. Sanghvi College of Engineering. The team consists of 40 undergraduate engineering students that design, manufacture and fabricate a single seater all-terrain vehicle from scratch every year.
Results of BAJA SAE 2020 held in Arizona, USA
Also notable is the fact that 3 out of the Top 10 winners were from India! And all three Indian institutions were from Maharashtra. D Y Patil College of Engineering, Akurdi (Team Predators Racing) ranked 8th globally and Maharashtra Institute of Technology (Team Piranha Racing) ranked 10th. Baja SAE is an intercollegiate design competition run by Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). SAE, or the “Society of Automotive Engineers,” is an international organization that promotes the exchange of important information and ideas between engineers in mobility-related professions where students from universities all over the world design, build and race all-terrain vehicles (ATV) that can withstand the harshest elements of rough terrain. Each year as many as 100 Baja cars representing countries all over the world from India, China, Mexico, Brazil, USA and Canada enter in the Baja SAE events in the International forum.
Picture of vehicle taking run at acceleration event in BAJA SAE India
The timeline of the competition consisted of three phases namely designing, manufacturing and testing. Designing starts in March and is completed by May. By June end the chassis prototype is completed and manufacturing begins. All the parts are then machined and the materials are procured in this period of manufacturing lasting from July to September. Testing commences after manufacturing where the built all-terrain vehicle is tested extensively. Once the vehicle is competition ready after all the testing, priority is given to the aesthetics of the car. The car is finally shipped to the United States of America by mid-March to participate in the competition.
Each competition requires students to balance cost with design and dynamic performance while following a strict set of safety regulations and standardized rules. Competitions are four days long during which teams compete in three static events and five dynamic events for a grand total of 1000 points. Static Events are so named because the car does not move during these events.
The static events take place on the first two days of a competition. The scored static events are the Cost Report, Sales Presentation, and Design Judging. Respectively, these events are worth 100, 50, and 150 points. The Cost Report is a document containing what the team has calculated to be the Actual Cost and Adjusted Cost of their car and their justification (calculations). Actual Cost is the amount of money the team actually spent to build their car. Adjusted Cost, basically, is a cost calculated from standardized materials/labour costs made up by the judges for the purposes of making the event more fair.
The Sales Presentation is an approximately 15 minute session within which teams try to convince a hypothetical manufacturing company to purchase their vehicle’s design and put it into production. Each sales pitch must be a maximum of 10 minutes long, and a 5 minute question and answer session with the judges follows the pitch.
Dynamic events take place on the third and fourth days of competition. The third day is exclusively for time trials. Each team races their car through a number of events including a maneuverability course, an acceleration track, a hill climb or sled pull event, and a special event specified for each competition (suspension and traction, or rock crawl). The fourth day of competition is reserved for a four hour endurance race in which all participating teams are on the same track at once, racing side by side. This part of the competition is the event worth the most points and makes designing and fabrication for durability paramount to success. However due to the Covid-19 pandemic the dynamic events were scrapped off and only the static events were conducted virtually over video conferencing from 27th May to 5th June.
Due to the COVID19 pandemic, the competition was declared to be conducted virtually for the year 2020. On 19th June 2020 the results of the competition were announced and DJS Kronos rankings were as mentioned –
3rd – Overall placing all over the world (257.16/300) 4th – Design Presentation (132/150) 8th – Sales Presentation (43.96/50) 9th – Cost Presentation (81.20/100)
Team photo at BAJA SAE India
The DJS Kronos Team was led under the captain Gaurav Jain and the mentorship of the faculty advisors Rajnarayan Yadav and Shashikant Auti. They were also supported by Dr.K.N. Vijaykumar, Principal Dr.Hari Vasudevan and D.J. Sanghvi College management.
DJS Kronos Team with college faculty