Amount of funding awarded
$6000
Budget Report
View budget report.
How the program has supported you
Our intention with this project was and is to provide a platform with which our engineers can test the electronics, programming, and mechanics associated with our powertrain. Without such a test setup, our engineers are limited to the data they can collect from simulation and actual vehicle driving. Neither of these lend themselves to a true controlled-environment testing platform. Paf funding enabled our team to bring in the best components for our setup. We now have a setup on par with that of the best teams in North America, and the tools necessary to challenge those teams for the championship.
Outcomes
Many students across our team benefit from this project. We are looking at 25 students right now, with that number only increasing as we iterate and revise over the coming years. Electrically, we have an opportunity to test inverter and drive control circuitry/code before putting it into the safety-critical vehicle operations. Our battery team is able to discharge their cells through the load of the motors on the bench and monitor the characteristics of the energy transfer. Our drivetrain team is part-way through the design process for one of the best gearbox setups in North America and will be testing this gearbox on this bench setup as they iterate and tune it. These sorts of tests will continue for the foreseeable on this team because the components we are using for this project are the best available and serve our teams objectives long-term.
