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Formula Student Team Delft 2012

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Formula Student United Kingdom SpecialEdition

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Dear reader,

It has been several days since our team has returned from our first audition at the Formula Student competition in Silverstone. This was the first chance to show the performance of our team and our newest car to over 8000 people visiting, competing, judging and organizing the event.

If you would like to stay updated on the progress of the DUT12 team you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter. If you want more background information about the DUT Racing Team you can visit our website. Please have a look at our website overview beneath this page.

•Formula Student United Kingdom

•Arrival at Silverstone

•Scrutineering 1

•Static Events

•Scrutineering 2

•Dynamic Events

•Award Ceremony

Preface

Photo by:Jim Rojer

Formula Student United Kingdom

Arrival at Silverstone

Photo by:Mart Ruijs

Formula Student United Kingdom (FSUK) is held at the famous F1 circuit of the United Kingdom: Silverstone. At FSUK, there are 110 cars competing from 34 different countries. An exciting new feature of the competition this year is that the electric cars are competing directly against the combustion cars in 1 class. This means that the DUT12 will be measured against the combustion cars with respect to its design and racing capabilities.

On Tuesday the 10th of July the first group of people arrived at Silverstone to set up the team campsite and the pits. Setting up the campsite was not the biggest thing in the minds of the team members. Everyone’s mind was with the car. Who had just been in running order for 4 days. How would we score at this competition, if we have only had 4 days of testing? To gain an extra day of testing we even decided to let the car arrive on Wednesday, with our second group of people.

Arrival at Silverstone

Photo by:Daniel Colon

Photo by:Martijn Roelofs

In the afternoon the rest of the team arrived and the pitbox was set up. The pitbox really caught everyone’s attention being clean and well organised. The walls of the pitbox were built up from banners which depicted the design of the car and of course all of our sponsors. Now the pitbox was ready, the car could be prepared for Scrutineering.

On Wednesday morning the car arrived without accumulator. It appeared that the accumulator was showing some problems after testing and it would arrive later that day. That would be a close call!

Scrutineering I

Photo by:Mart Ruijs

Photo by:Daniel Colon

On Friday the 13th, we did not go to Scrutineering in the morning because we had to perform at the static events of the competition. At 09:00h, we were Friday’s first team to start Design Judging and this went very well as we passed on to enter the Design Judging Finals!

On Thursday at 13:00h in the afternoon, it was our turn in the Scrutineering queue. Scrutineering consists of a series of tests where scrutineers check the car for it’s electrical (E-Scrutineering) and mechanical (Tech-Scrutineering) safety, water-proofness (Rain test), rollover stability (Tilt test) and braking performance (Brake test). Electrical scrutineering is a very thorough procedure, especially when a discussion that started concerning the resistance between our High Voltage and Low Voltage system. After solving this minor issue it was 18:00h when we finished E-Scrutineering and the paddock closed.

Static Events

Static Events

Photo van:Daniel Colon

Photo by:Daniel Colon

After the Design Judging event we returned to the queue for the Rain test. During this test the car is sprayed with water for 120s while the tractive system is active, it then has to sit without deactivating for 120s to proof it’s waterproofness. It appeared that our car was not completely waterproof the 1st time, because the tractive system deactivated due to water that had slipped into the accumulator. While fixing the problem with the accumulator, the rest of the car was allowed to go into Tech-Scrutineering, which we finished without problems. Eventually we still managed to pass the Rain test and very shortly after the Tilt test but then it was already 18:00h when the paddock closed and we still had to attend the Brake test.

At 10:00h, we had to present our Cost and Manufacturing report. We turned out to be 33rd with a score of 63/100. Next, the business plan presentation was given in which we ended up to be 12th getting 63 points out of 75 points possible. From the feedback given by the judges we know how to improve radically on these 2 events giving us a lot of confidence to be the best at our next competition in Hockenheim!

Scrutineering II

Scrutineering II

Photo by:Daniel Colon

Photo by:Daniel Colon

After the brake test had finally been completed, we only had half an hour to complete acceleration and skidpad. This meant we could only do these events with 1 driver. Making things even more thrilling: it was raining and due to the control system problems in the morning we couldn’t use traction control. These influences had put a lot of pressure on our driver, Bastiaan who did not have any experience in wet conditions due to the lack of testing time, but he was still able to set a third place in acceleration and sixth in skidpad. Awesome driving Bastiaan!

The official weight of the car turned out to be 148kg. This meant we had built the lightest vehicle of the competition, even lighter than any of our combustion competitors! Which is an extraordinary result for an electric car!

When we wanted to attend the brake test Saturday at 09:00h we faced another problem. The car did not start and it appeared that the control system of our car was still not waterproof. We managed to fix the problem and performed the brake test successfully in 1 run.

Dynamic Events

On Saturday morning the first dynamic events started, namely acceleration and skidpad. In the acceleration event the car has to accelerate as fast as possible over a distance of 75m. The skidpad event tests the car’s lateral acceleration by driving a figure of 8 as quick as possible.

Dynamic Events

Photo by:Lennart van den Boom

Photo by:Martijn Roelofs

The last, and proven to be the most difficult, event: the Endurance and Efficiency event. Why most difficult? Out of 63 teams that started the endurance, only 27 managed to finish. We still drove the endurance with 2 Wheel Drive (2WD) but let all 4 wheels regenerate the brake energy, Erik and Tim also changed their driving strategy to be as efficient as possible. Having been able to finish the endurance in sixth place and being the most efficient car in the field, we were able to win the combined Endurance and Efficiency event!

The whole team was relieved! We managed to set, in time, a good time in the acceleration and skidpad event! Next up, the sprint. In the sprint event the car has to prove it is easy to drive by only having 2 runs with 2 drivers in a 1 km sprint circuit. During the runs with our first driver Erik, we found out that one motor had shut down, leaving the car very difficult to handle. For the runs with our second driver, Tim, we shut down both front motors and improved the brake balance. With this decrease in power and less wheels to put the power to the road we still managed a ninth place in sprint.

Award Ceremony

Photo by:Lennert van den Boom

This all resulted in being the Class 1 Runner Up (2nd place overall)! It was a very close battle, only 2 points (out of 1000 points) behind Chalmers University of Technology from Sweden. We were the best Electric car at FSUK which is an awesome result for only half a car (2WD). This awesome result could certainly not be possible without our sponsors who we want to thank for all their help and dedication!

As you read this newsletter we are working very hard to get our 4WD system to work as it is designed to do, and we are very confident to score very high at Hockenheim!

The competition is concluded with the hand out of the awards, and we won quite a few:- Airbus Lightweight Vehicle Award; prize for thelightest vehicle in the competition finishing endurancehandedoutbyAirbus- MostFuelEfficientCar;PrizefortheEfficiencyeventwinner,thecarwiththe lowestCarbondioxideexhaustofthecompetition- Class 1 Design Winner; The team with the bestdesignedcarofthecompetition- BestHighVoltagePowertrainImplementation;prizeawardedbyMercedesHighPerformancePowertrains- Innovation inEnergyandPropulsion systems;prizeawardedbyJaguarLandRover- Carrol Smith Memorial Shield;Another award forthebestdesigned carof the competition,aplaceon theCarrolSmithmemorialshieldtrophythatisreturnedtothecompetitioneveryyear.

Stay tuned on all our media because the best is yet to come! Did you already check out our FSG teaser on Facebook?

Photo van:Lennart van den Boom

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