Engineering Experience 4: Design a Small Solar Vehicle/2012: Team PM10

Introduction

The EE4-project for Elektro-Mechanics students at GroepT consists of building a Small Solar Vehicle (SSV). This vehicle, equipped with a solar panel and a DC motor, has to satisfy some conditions.

Only the solar panel may provide power to the motor.
The SSV must have a minimum weight of 750 gram.
A maximum budget of 200 euro

At the end of the semester, a race will be organized by GroepT where all teams can present their vehicles and race against each other to see who has the most innovative design.

Team & Logo

The name of the team is "2Fast2Solar". For extra information, visit our site.

Name	Function
Jana Ostijn	Team leader
Maarten Taekels	Project co-worker, Alternating secretary
Philip Claessens	Project co-worker, Alternating secretary
Mario Sequi	Project co-worker, Alternating secretary
Niels Vidts	Project co-worker, Alternating secretary
Christof Struyf	Project co-worker, Alternating secretary
Stijn Verstraeten	Project co-worker, Alternating secretary
Mathias Deraet	Project co-worker, Alternating secretary

General Information

Plan of approach

Everyone needs a plan to complete a project. The plan of approach is a document where we explain how our team will complete the project.

WBS & Gantt chart

The work breakdown structure breaks a project in smaller subprojects and components. This helps the project organization.

Meeting Reports

All the meeting reports of our team will be posted here.

Report Case 1

All the information about the first part of our EE4 project is found in the document below.

Report Case 1

Report Case 2

All the information about the second part of our EE4 project is found in the document below.

Report Case 2

Blog

Week 1

This week we were given the assignment of building a SSV. The assignment was explained in a class and the teams were formed. After getting to know each member, we started working to meet the first deadline. We also made a dropbox folder to quickly share files between team members.

Week 2

Tim van Loock left our team, because he isn't studying Electromechanics anymore. But we also got a new team member from Spain, Mario Sequi. We got positive feedback from our coach Tan Ye about our WBS, Gantt Chart and plan of approach. Minor adjustements were needed but no big, structural changes. After the second seminar about DC motors and solar panels, we recieved our solar panel and DC motor. We had to measure some values of our solar panel to calculate the diode constant. Further we also discussed about our team logo, but that's currently still under construction.

Week 3

This week we got a seminar about the gear ratio and power. The coaches said this was the hardest part of our project, but we will succeed. After the seminar we immediatly went to the brainstorm table. The first thing on our agenda was choosing the team logo, after a quick vote it was done. The second subject to discuss was the design of our solar vehicle. We chose for a triangular design with rear-wheel drive, but maybe we will go with a front-wheel drive if the design allows it because it's more stable. After the meeting some team members started working at a 3d-model of our SSV in solid edge and others were brainstorming about differential gears. Will we go for a fancy or fast car?

Week 4

Matlab was the main thing we learned in this week's seminar. We learned how to use the toolbox 'simulink' in matlab. In the meeting we divided the tasks. Niel, Stijn and Mathias were given the simulink task. They will need to simulate the motor and solar cells using matlab. Jana and Christof must finish the solid edge model of the car and Philip and Maarten need to calculate how our SSV will behave it's first second on the track. After these tasks, some members went and look for some components for our SSV in GAMMA, Brico, AUTO 5, but with no succes. One of the shops suggested that the components we need are sold at Metalleuven...

Week 5

Week 5, the first week we didn't consult our coach Tan Ye. There is bad news and good news. Let's start with the bad news: the materials we needed for our SSV weren't sold at Metalleuven, but the good news is that we can order them on the internet. The seminar of this week learned us how we can contact Fablab to make the required materials for our SSV and someone from the Umicore Solar Team gave a presentation about his experiences with the Umicar. This made us believe that we were doing a great job about making the world a greener place by using free energy from the sun to power our car. After the seminar Team PM10 divided themselves in three subteams: the Matlab-Simulink Team, the Maple-Matlab Team and the Solid Edge Team. The two Matlab teams installed Matlab on their laptops and started working. After some calculations we determined our ideal gear ratio which is 7!

Week 6

No seminar this week :), but that doesn't mean we don't have to work on the project. We need to make a full report about our SSV. Full means Matlab, Maple, Solid edge and more... The deadline is Friday, we hope we make it. Another important thing on the agenda is the peer assessment. Each member had to fill it in, otherwise they get minus one point on their total grade of this course. One thing that made working not fun Tuesday was the sunny weather :(. Tan Ye was very pleased with our progress.

Week 7

All the theoretical work of the last weeks became reality in week 7. After a short meeting everyone got an assignment. There were three assignments to complete: Fablab, joints & shaft and Sankey diagrams. At Fablab we had to rescale our design in Solid Edge. When it was rescaled we had to learn how to work with the program InkScape, because this program was very handy to operate the laser cutter. The laser cut the frame and the wheels out of a single sheet of Plexiglas without any problems. Other team members also found a shaft and bullet joints. Now we still need four components for our SSV: a part to hold the bullet joint, a mechanism to hold and aim the solar panel to the sun and the gears to power the shaft. For the mechanism to hold the solar panel we will probably use the ball and socket joint from a car mirror. The gears will be cut at Fablab from the rest of our sheet of Plexiglas. Two team members will try to make something to hold the bullet joints in the holidays, so see you in two weeks!

Week 8

This week was a week full of stress. Let me explain, during this week there were several tests of different courses, EE4 included. On top of all this tests, we had to build our SSV during the week. We still needed some parts and we were having trouble designing the gears. When we got sort of all the parts, we started building the SSV, but not all parts fitted well, so we had to think about alternative methods to solve these problems. Eventually we glued it all together and the frame was finished, so the only thing we have to do next week is attaching the solar panel and the motor to the frame.

Week 9

This was a week of many failures. We redesigned our SSV, so it would be made completely out of Plexiglas. The main advantages of this redesign were that the SSV was more aerodynamic, less heavy and better looks. One cool thing we discovered is that you can weld Plexiglas together by using chloroform. So when v2.0 was completed, we tested it. But because the L-profile rail wasn't very smooth and straight, our mechanism for following this rail failed, so we went back at the drawing boards. We came with the idea of a single front wheel that rides on the rail. When v3.0 was ready, we tested it again, but it went so fast that it jumped of the rail and it broke in two. So again we made some minor adjustments at the design and started building the final version of our SSV, SSV v3.1. And as a final touch we mounted some LED's on it to make it even fancier...

Week 10

Not much happened this week, because we had monday and tuesday free. Everyone worked on their task... The site of 2F2S is complete, you can download the link to it here.

Week 11

Finally we have a meeting again with the team, because last week there wasn't one. The main point on the agenda is talking about our status of our Case II report. Everyone had worked well, but we still had some questions about the calculations. So we had a coaching session with our coach Tan Ye, he explained and gave instructions how to solve our problems and we realised that some calculations were harder then we thought. He also gave some advice on the second test to come, so we will be prepared well...

The Race Results

The race was exciting and we got the silver medal, 2nd place. Our best time was 4"05.

Additional Files

LogBooks

The logbooks of all team members can be found in the following zip file.

Logbooks EE4 Team PM10

Links