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Spring 2017

Shell Eco-Marathon Prototype Team

Overview The Shell Eco-Marathon is an annual competition that challenges students to design, build, and drive the most energy-efficient vehicle. The Prototype vehicle will compete in the battery-electric category. The students in the Spring 2017 semester have a semester to design, build, and test a fully-functional Prototype vehicle for the competition on April 28th, 2017. Objectives The Prototype Team’s objective is to build and race the most fuel-efficient battery electric vehicle that fulfills the 2017 Shell Eco-Marathon official rules. Approach

• The team was given a new aluminum frame and a 48V, 500W brushless DC (BLDC) hub motor from the Fall 2016 semester’s team.

• Patents on electric vehicles and brushless DC (BLDC) motors were reviewed. • Fuel-efficiency benchmarks were looked at from previous Shell Eco-Marathon

competitions. • The 2017 Shell Eco-Marathon official rulebook gave the design team a list of

requirements for which the vehicle had to fulfill. • A 51.2V, 6.6Ahr Lithium-Iron battery was chosen to match the BLDC hub motor’s

nominal voltage to make the vehicle more fuel-efficient. • A TI DRV8301 gate driver integrated circuit and a dsPIC33 microcontroller were

used in the construction of a custom BLDC motor controller. • A new steering system based on Ackerman’s steering geometry was designed

and fabricated to optimize the vehicle’s steering performance. • The braking system and wheel attachments were optimized on the new frame.

Outcomes• The vehicle was designed and fabricated with a

budget of $1,200.00. • Improvement recommendations were passed to

future teams for better fuel-efficient performance in the 2018 Shell Eco-Marathon competition.

• All team progress was documented on SharePoint.