Meat
rack rack 'em
So I just got back from the 2008 SAE Formula Hybrid competition at New Hampshire Motor Speedway yesterday. My team from school (Embry Riddle Aeronautical University) brought our car back to defend our title as national champions.
The Car:
The car is a hybrid gasoline-electric race vehicle that is powered by a 248cc internal combustion engine originally out of a Kawasaki Ninja making 36 HP at 11,500 rpm. The car utilizes an 18 HP electric motor that makes around 200 ft/lbs of torque at 1,250 rpm. The car has two capacitor banks each holding 25 Maxwell Ultracap capacitors. The frame is 4130 steel tubular chassis. The rear end is comprised of a structural transaxle that houses a rear differential from a Polaris ATV and the computer controlled, electronically actuated CVT. The front suspension is tubular and the rear a-arms are made of carbon fiber with nomex honeycomb cores. The total vehicle weight is 583 pounds wet. Our car was the lightest.
The Build
We have been designing and building the car for the past 7 months or so. We simplified our design and put the car on a massive weight reduction program. We used more composite materials and eliminated a lot of mechanical linkages, chains, and gears from our drivetrain. The design side began after last year's competition. The suspension, transaxle, and wheels wheels were designed, tested, and fitted in CATIA as were additional elements that will be incorporated into the design in the future but were unable to be included this year; these include a composite monocoque, front carbon fiber a-arms, and custom front wheels.
Nearly all of the components were constructed by us in our workshop and in our machine shop. The custom wheel centers, transaxle, CVT housing, and suspension uprights were all machined in-house on our Haas CNC machines.
We had many late nights in the shop and really got hectic as it came closer to competition. We were actually doing some final construction the night before the competition in the parking lot of the hotel. We were even wet-sanding and painting the nose cone in the bathroom that night. The body doesn't look at nice as last year's (it was a beautiful professionally painted full body last year) but the car performed much better.
The Competition
There were 16 teams at the competition including: Embry Riddle Aeronautical University (my team), Yale, Dartmouth, Illinois Institute of Tech., University of Vermont, McGill University (from Canada), Tufts University, NC State, University of Wisconsin, University of California, National Chiao Tung Univ. (from Taiwan), California Polytech, Florida Tech, Drexel University, and Moscow State Tech.
The competition included various events:
-one 75 meter acceleration event utilizing the electric motor only
-one 75 meter acceleration event utilizing the hybrid system
-an autocross competition
-a 22km endurance race
-a design presentation and sales pitch
We completed the electric acceleration run in 8.8 seconds and the hybrid run in 7.7. We were third in the acceleration test behing McGill and Dartmouth. We came in second in the autocross with the time we set in our first run but did not want to waste fuel to attempt to better it (we only get a little over a gallon of fuel for the whole competititon). We completed 32 of the 40 laps of the endurance race before our oil catch can overfilled and leaked some oil onto the track. We were told that we could not come back onto the track after we had been black flagged so that ended that event for us. We made the design finals and won for the best design in the competition.
Overall we were second in the points. Had we finished the endurance we would have won the whole thing. McGill ended up edging us out though for the second year in a row, but we have a lot more changes in store and a lot of room to improve. At least we can say that we're NATIONAL CHAMPS :thumbsup:
Pics:
Other Entrants:
McGill
Dartmouth
Yale
University of California
Illinois Institute of Technology
Wisconsin (sorry, no full shot)
Feel free to ask any question. I'll try to answer them as best I can.
The Car:
The car is a hybrid gasoline-electric race vehicle that is powered by a 248cc internal combustion engine originally out of a Kawasaki Ninja making 36 HP at 11,500 rpm. The car utilizes an 18 HP electric motor that makes around 200 ft/lbs of torque at 1,250 rpm. The car has two capacitor banks each holding 25 Maxwell Ultracap capacitors. The frame is 4130 steel tubular chassis. The rear end is comprised of a structural transaxle that houses a rear differential from a Polaris ATV and the computer controlled, electronically actuated CVT. The front suspension is tubular and the rear a-arms are made of carbon fiber with nomex honeycomb cores. The total vehicle weight is 583 pounds wet. Our car was the lightest.
The Build
We have been designing and building the car for the past 7 months or so. We simplified our design and put the car on a massive weight reduction program. We used more composite materials and eliminated a lot of mechanical linkages, chains, and gears from our drivetrain. The design side began after last year's competition. The suspension, transaxle, and wheels wheels were designed, tested, and fitted in CATIA as were additional elements that will be incorporated into the design in the future but were unable to be included this year; these include a composite monocoque, front carbon fiber a-arms, and custom front wheels.
Nearly all of the components were constructed by us in our workshop and in our machine shop. The custom wheel centers, transaxle, CVT housing, and suspension uprights were all machined in-house on our Haas CNC machines.
We had many late nights in the shop and really got hectic as it came closer to competition. We were actually doing some final construction the night before the competition in the parking lot of the hotel. We were even wet-sanding and painting the nose cone in the bathroom that night. The body doesn't look at nice as last year's (it was a beautiful professionally painted full body last year) but the car performed much better.
The Competition
There were 16 teams at the competition including: Embry Riddle Aeronautical University (my team), Yale, Dartmouth, Illinois Institute of Tech., University of Vermont, McGill University (from Canada), Tufts University, NC State, University of Wisconsin, University of California, National Chiao Tung Univ. (from Taiwan), California Polytech, Florida Tech, Drexel University, and Moscow State Tech.
The competition included various events:
-one 75 meter acceleration event utilizing the electric motor only
-one 75 meter acceleration event utilizing the hybrid system
-an autocross competition
-a 22km endurance race
-a design presentation and sales pitch
We completed the electric acceleration run in 8.8 seconds and the hybrid run in 7.7. We were third in the acceleration test behing McGill and Dartmouth. We came in second in the autocross with the time we set in our first run but did not want to waste fuel to attempt to better it (we only get a little over a gallon of fuel for the whole competititon). We completed 32 of the 40 laps of the endurance race before our oil catch can overfilled and leaked some oil onto the track. We were told that we could not come back onto the track after we had been black flagged so that ended that event for us. We made the design finals and won for the best design in the competition.
Overall we were second in the points. Had we finished the endurance we would have won the whole thing. McGill ended up edging us out though for the second year in a row, but we have a lot more changes in store and a lot of room to improve. At least we can say that we're NATIONAL CHAMPS :thumbsup:
Pics:
Other Entrants:
McGill
Dartmouth
Yale
University of California
Illinois Institute of Technology
Wisconsin (sorry, no full shot)
Feel free to ask any question. I'll try to answer them as best I can.
