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Formula Student Team Delft 2012

Photo by:FSG: Kroeger

Formula Student Germany SpecialEdition

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Dear Reader,

After a good performance in Silverstone earlier this summer, the team has been working very hard to get the car in perfect running order for our second competition in Hockenheim. To show that our four-wheel drive concept is indeed the best! The result is one for be proud of. Our team managed to impress in many areas, you can find more about in this newsletter.

•Formula Student Germany

•Preparations

•Scrutineering 1

•Scrutineering 2

•Statics

•Night and Day

•Dynamic Events

•Endurance Award Ceremony

•Conclusion

Preface

Photo by:FSG: Scheuplein

Formula Student Germany

Preparations

Photo by:FSG: Kroeger

Photo by:FSG: Buck

Formula Student Germany (FSG) is held at the race track in Hockenheimring. In contrast to the event in Silverstone, FSG splits up the combustion (FSC) and electric (FSE) classes. In total, 32 Electric and 76 Combustion teams competed in probably the most professional, and certainly most competitive, Formula Student competition in the world: all the winners of previous 2012 season competitions where present.

Despite the good results at Silverstone several weeks before, all four motors still didn’t function flawlessly. With the start of FSG drawing near, the team had to push for as much testing time as possible. So, while the majority of the team attended the opening ceremony on Tuesday 31 of July, a small group was left behind to perform some final test on the car. Would they succeed in preparing the car for our final event? Would we be able to show the full potential of four-wheel drive?

Scrutineering I - Wednesday

Photo by:FSG: Kroeger

Photo by:Martijn Roelofs

Photo by:FSG: Grams

Although the successful tests the previous day gave us a lot of confidence, it did hamper our readiness for scrutineering. The electrical and technical scrutineering, tilt test, rain test and brake test all had to be completed still at the end of the first day.

As always, before any car can compete in the dynamic events, the car will be examined with scrutiny. It has to comply with all the rules of the competition and be safe to operate. This process requires a decent preparation of your car. Ours however, was not ready at all.

Scrutineering II - Thursday

Photo by:Daniel Colon

Photo by:FSG: Kroeger

At half past one we completed electrical and technical scrutineering. It was time for our first static event: Cost judging. A job well done by Robert and Reinier as far as the smiles on our judges’ faces could tell.

It was Thursday and we were now first in line for E-Scrutineering. Our car seemed to be prepared pretty well, except for one thing: the wiring of our front motors. Apparently we had illicitly combined Low Voltage and High Voltage wiring to our motors. Convincing the scrutineers of our reasons to do so, we did pass electrical scrutineering and were able continue with the other tests. However, competition officials were not completely convinced that our solution was safe enough to justify an exception to the rules.

Photo by:FSG: GramsStatics

Static Events

Photo by:Daniel Colon

Photo by:Martijn Roelofs

In the evening, competition officials told us that we did have to separate the low and high voltage cables leading to the front motors. Our E-scrutineering sticker was removed from the car. Luckily there was some good news as well; we got fourth place in the presentation event!

After Cost judging, at 14:30, the show went on and our ten team members attending Engineering Design had to be ready. All went well, a fortunate thing for the whole team, who were there to support the crew! A little later, at 15:45, it was time to talk business in the Baden-Würtemberg tower. With an amazing view on the paddock and a good business proposal to present, this event seemed to successfully conclude statics for us. During the business plan presentation, our car continued with scrutineering and passed the tilt, rain and brake test. Photo by:

FSG: Kroeger

Scrutineering II

Night and Day - Friday

Photo by:FSG: Buck

The award ceremony part 1 on Friday turned out great for our team. We won Cost judging, making Robert the happiest man of the paddock! A bit later, chief Chassis Jonas was just as happy because he also got rewarded for his great work with carbon fibre through the BASF “Best Use of Fiber Reinforced Plastics” award. We also won two other awards: Second prize in “E-Drive Packaging” by DAIMLER and the second prize for “Innovative use of Powertrain Systems” powered by Bosch.

Friday morning was tough. Three of our team members had been working all night to split the wires to our front motors and succeeded at 8:00AM. Skidpad would start at 11:00 and we had to invite an E-scrutineer to check our new wiring. It all turned out to be fine and we were finally ready to roll! Our first driver, Reinier, set a very fast time on Skidpad, putting us in a preliminary third place. But, after turning the car off for the driver change, it wouldn’t start. Therefore, our second driver, Bastiaan, wasn’t able to try to improve our first result.

During the afternoon, we got to know that we achieved top 5 in both Cost and Engineering Design, meaning we could take part in the design finals that evening at 19:00. After the Engineering Design finals the first award ceremony would take place. In the meantime, we had to figure out why the car wouldn’t start again after the first Skidpad attempt.

After the pleasantly fruitful award ceremony, chief Electronics Hugo went back to work, determined to track the problem that made the car refuse to start. It apparently had something to do with the Electric Control Unit of the car. He would work for many hours.

Photo by:FSG: Scheuplein

Photo by:FSG: Kroeger

Dynamics - Saturday

Photo by:FSG: Kroeger

Photo by:FSG: Scheuplein

There wasn’t much time to enjoy this result for the team, the next event was coming up: Autocross. With the Skidpad and Acceleration results in mind, we had high hopes for the Autocross. It sure was exciting, with just minutes until the event closed, we were in the lead. Our car just ran a great time of 76.37 seconds, outrunning both the combustion and electric competition by almost 2 seconds. But, while we were celebrating this result our competitor ETH Zurich pushed their car below 76 seconds in the final minute of the Autocross.

Hugo didn’t sleep, worked hard and was successful. The problem of the car indeed originated from the ECU and could be fixed. Was this the last problem we would encounter? It was not, just hours later the car went on the practice area and experienced some issues with the rear right motor. The car could still perform well enough so our participation in the acceleration event – highly anticipated by the team – was not at risk. On the contrary, we smashed the fastest times so far and stunned everyone with a time of only 3.45 seconds over 75 meters. A great success and the first proof of concept for our four-wheel driven design!

The day was over; our pit was filled with curious people, gazing at the car that accelerated so fast! For us, it was a moment of rest. The car finally worked well.

Photo by:FSG: Kroeger

Endurance & Award Ceremony

Photo by:FSG: Grams

Sunday evening, the moment we have all been waiting for – The FSG Award Ceremony. We won the Audi Best Lightweight Concept Award, awarded to the car that in Audi’s opinion: really showed “Vorsprung durch Technik”. We won the Engineering Design Finals and we won the Acceleration event. Then it was time to announce the Formula Student Electric overall winner: and this award went to… Car E1: The Technical University of Delft! Formula Student Electric Champions!

A good night of sleep did us well. All were highly motivated and excited about the last day of the event and the all-important final test: the Endurance. Twenty-two kilometres of potential failure and energy consumption were between us, and overall victory. As Energy-efficiency is very important in Formula Student (10% of the total score), we had to find a good compromise between being fast and our energy consumption. Our goal was to win the efficiency prize, whilst keeping up a good pace. The result was a 2nd time in endurance and our batteries where not empty yet.

Photo by:FSG: Kroeger

Photo by:FSG: Grams

Conclusion

Photo by:FSG: Reichmann

For that reason, I would like to use this part of our newsletter to thank you, for this great year and learning experience. Without the people who are enthusiastic about Formula Student and the TU Delft team in particular, this great result would not have been accomplished.

With kind regards,

The DUT Racing Team 2012

As you might have noticed in the last two newsletters, Formula Student is constantly going down and getting up. This is the experience; the emotional rollercoaster that we all have signed for at the beginning of the year. Resulting in 14 prizes in the total of two competitions.

Photo by:FSG: Scheuplein

Photo by:FSG: Kroeger

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