Blog

Bourn Again

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Lucy Fielding

Saturday saw our first test run in a couple of months. The team met early at the department to load Endeavour mkII onto the trailer for a day of testing at Bourn airfield, just a few miles down the road.

We were testing a few things: the new battery pack which is now race-ready, a few different tyres, and the the car’s re-wired electrical system. We decided to test without the shell because A: it’s not fitted to the car yet, and B: it’s not ready to be fitted to the car yet.

Posted in 2011 Car, Testing | Leave a comment

The Electrical Team Lights The Way

Posted on July 20, 2011 by Lucy Fielding

The electrical rebuild has accelerated from “rapid” to “frantic” in recent weeks. Numerous tasks compete for the attention of the electrical team, from battery management systems and cell balancing, to lights and driver controls. It’s all got to be done, and recent work has focussed on getting the car ready for testing this weekend.

The battery management system (BMS) is something we’re particularly proud of. Not only does it intercept, interpret and act upon CAN messages from the Lifebatt cell management modules (CMMs), but it also monitors the current into and out of the battery via our Isabellenhütte shunt resistors and shuts off the battery from the rest of the vehicle in the event of a fault.

Posted in 2011 Car, Electrical | 2 Comments

Interview with an Engineer: Composites Team Leader

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Lucy Fielding

Name: Lucy C.D. Fielding

Age: 24

College: Jesus

Engineering Specialisation: Materials and Aeronautical

Fourth year project title: I’m actually doing a PhD now, on “Understanding the toughness and ductility of novel steels with mixed microstructures”. My fourth year project was “Aerodynamics of a Solar Car” – or it tried to be.

What your PhD actually involves: Grinding. Which, as it turns out, is the steel version of sanding. Oh, and occasionally skiving off to build solar cars.

Height: 160 cm (0.91 Tom Grimbles – although when you control for the sex and ethnicity variables, I’m actually taller than he is)

Anything else that you feel defines you: Er, steel. And bad engineering jokes. Oh, and I hate rowing with the fire of a thousand suns.

Posted in Composites, Interview with an Engineer | 1 Comment

Testing at Bourn Airfield

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Lucy Fielding

Testing has been an essential part of CUER’s work this year. One project in particular has been key to getting us outside of our labs, offices and college rooms and up to Bourn airfield where there is a few hundred metres of old runway we can use to test.

Posted in 2011 Car, Cambridge, Testing | Leave a comment

Outreach at Park Street Primary School

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Lucy Fielding

Last month we sent our head of Composites, Lucy, to Park Street C of E Primary School to talk to a class about engineering. The children had been studying “Inventors” as their topic and were very excited to meet a real-life inventor! Lucy was just as excited to be described as one. The class learned about the different stages of an engineering project (brainstorm – design – reject – brainstorm – design – reject – panic – design – build – break – rebuild – test – break – rebuild – test – end), and put their newly-discovered skills into practice designing their own solar car. Powered by crisps.

They also saw pictures of the build and race of Endeavour in 2009, and got to have a hands-on session with some components and materials used in the car.

Posted in Cambridge, Outreach | Leave a comment

Battery Taxonomy

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Lucy Fielding

Those ardent followers of not only our blog but also our twitter feed (@cuer2011) will have started to hear many names float about in reference to the battery. In deference to their loyalty, and also because it makes a reasonably interesting blog post about batteries, here is a breakdown of the components of CUER’s battery.

We begin with the smallest unit in a battery – the cell. This is a single lithium-iron-phosphate (LiFePO4) cell. A cell is essentially a block of chemistry – in its simplest form, it contains two metal electrodes and an electrolyte (here, LiFePO4). What we often refer to as a battery (e.g. Duracell, Energizer) is actually just a single cell. They work by undergoing oxidation and reduction reactions at the two electrodes; these reactions are complementary and require a flow of electrons. It is this flow of electrons that provides the ‘electricity’ from the cell.

Here is one of our cells:

Posted in 2011 Car, Anatomy of a Solar Car, Electrical | Leave a comment

Interview with an Engineer: Aerodynamics Team Leader

Posted on June 15, 2011 by Lucy Fielding

Name: Qichao ‘George’ George ‘Qichao’ Zhao

Age: 21

College: Fitzwilliam

Engineering Specialisation: Aerospace

Fourth year project title: Internal Flows of a Solar Vehicle

What you’re actually doing for your fourth year project: Underbody Aerodynamics of a Solar Vehicle, and an Integrated CFD Workflow.

Hah. No, I just run random meshes and then scarper to play badminton.

Height: 175cm (1.02 Tom Grimbles)

Anything else that you feel defines you: I’m CHINESE!

Posted in Aero, Interview with an Engineer | Leave a comment

Progress on the Battery

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Lucy Fielding

Just a quick post about working on the battery pack (“the Kraken”). We have mostly finished the plywood prototype battery enclosure, but still need to finish up a few things:

- Drill a few holes in the side walls for the top cell supports

- Drill holes to mount the contactor(s), DC-DC converter and CAN node.

- Make up as many 10 cell “sticks” of cells as we can and get these mounted. Putting them in the largest bracket set (“the 40-cell Beast”) would be best so that that part is complete.

- Produce interconnects between the blocks of cells (crimp connectors on thick wire with single Anderson connectors).

This stuff should only take about 3 hours (maybe that’s optimistic…).
When we’ve got this sorted we can try and get some BMS software tested on our prototype CAN nodes with the PicKit. We have also produced a rough outline of what we need to run past the guys at LiFeBATT so we can make sure our BMS catches all error states.

Posted in 2011 Car, Electrical | Leave a comment

Intel: Inside CUER

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Lucy Fielding

“Never work with animals or children” is a simple enough adage that utterly fails to take into account the fact that, somewhere on the child-animal isosurface, you will find engineers.

During their visit to the Engineering Department last week, Intel Studios learned this the hard way. Hoping to record interviews and scenes of work on the car, they were instead confronted with several people whose nocturnal habits left them blinking in the studio lights and asking why there were two suns.

Posted in 2011 Car, Cambridge | 1 Comment