Although elementary schools had to put their drawings in the mail by Wednesday, we’re still getting drawings by the package.  The amount is well over 3,000, and more just keep coming in!   Thank you to everyone who sent in a creative drawing- we look at every single one of them.   Once they stop pouring in, we’ll pick the best one, and then we’ll pack up the solar car to visit the winner’s school.

Project Manager Rachel Kramer, Mechanical Engineer Cole Witte, Mechanical Engineer Karl Nagengast, and Microengineer Aaresh Bilimoria crowd around the drawings.

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Meet the man behind the Camera.  Evan Dougherty is the member of Race Crew whose task is to document the team’s work this summer and the race experience in the fall.  He’s a 5th year senior, associate producer of Big Ten Network- Student U Productions at Michigan, the outgoing director of New Media at Wolv-tv, and he’s interested in going into film and television production after solar car.  Hear him talk about being an ex-engineer and what he’s most looking forward to about shipping off to Australia in the Fall:

As the team tries to pass exams during their breaks from Solar Car, team alumnus Steve Hechtman steps in as a guest author for this week’s Technical Thursday post.

Racing a solar-powered electric vehicle in competitions that span two continents and 3,000-4,000 miles of public roads presents a multitude of challenges for the University of Michigan Solar Car Team. One oft-overlooked challenge is near and dear to this team alumnus’s heart: waterproofing. The car does not need to stop racing in bad weather, because the car’s battery pack allows the car to drive up to 250 miles with no sun.  This means that the rest of the car parts must be prepared to function in the rainiest, wettest conditions. There’s no room for error when it comes to waterproofing.  If a critical electrical component were to fail because it was exposed to water, the team would have to pull over to replace the part.  This would cost the team precious race time, and could mean compromising a victory.

Engineers go to great lengths during the design and construction phases to protect electronics and the driver from rain, dust, and dirt. Unlike the weatherproofing on a production vehicle, weatherproofing on the solar car must be done in a lightweight, efficient manner. The first level of protection is the outer shell of the vehicle itself. The painted carbon fiber surface of the car is not porous to water.

The solar cells are also protected.  They’re laminated in a material that protects them from water and other elements.  The seams between different solar cell modules within the solar array are filled with a thin layer of water-resistant silicone, which prevents water from getting under the cells and coming into contact with the wiring of the solar panels. A puddle of water has ions that conduct electricity; therefore, if water touches both the positive and negative connections of a solar panel, electricity tends to flow through the water, rather than into the batteries of the solar car. This would prevent the car from getting any power from that solar panel, and could also damage the panel itself. This accidental electrical connection is called a “short circuit.”

As discussed in a previous technical Thursday, the seam between the upper and lower halves of the car is sealed off from the elements with everyone’s favorite yellow tape. The driver door, however, is not taped, so the driver can exit the car unassisted just in case there’s an emergency. The door is one area in which weather-stripping or silicone may be used to prevent water from entering.  Similar to a production vehicle’s door, a line of weather-stripping or silicone may be placed along the inside edge of the door. When the door is closed against the car’s body, this creates a weather-tight seal. Or, at least in theory it does.  Some thoroughly soaked drivers would tend to disagree.

Aside from the seam on the door, there are only four other places on the car where water can enter: the three wheel wells, and the low-drag NACA duct in front of the canopy that provides air for the driver. The simple solution for the driver’s air duct is to have the driver close the vent during wet conditions, stopping the flow of all water, or at least making it more of a pleasant mist to make up for the lack of air conditioning. Although water is kicked up by the wheels, carbon fiber bulkheads are designed to isolate the wheels and suspensions from the remainder of the vehicle. Carbon fiber or nylon wheel well covers are also placed above the wheels to provide additional protection from the elements.  This, however does not always stop the water as planned.

Even if the electronics are completely shielded from water, the rain may still be a nuisance for the driver.  The driver usually expects to get somewhat wet during a rain storm, and hopefully holes drilled in the cockpit prevent water from pooling up and giving the driver a bath. Unfortunately, this is somewhat of a trial-and-error process.

But even in monsoon conditions, although the water may be able to soak the driver, it is not able to get to the car’s components.  The 2009 Infinium team was soaked for a great deal of their testing in the Australian Outback, when water made its way through both the door seam and the wheel wells.  In soggy times like these, a second layer of defense protects all electronics—each circuit board has its own enclosure to shelter it from the elements. These enclosures span a wide variety of construction, from custom-made Kevlar housings, to off-the-shelf lightweight plastic boxes, or everyone’s favorite, the Altoids tin that has housed both circuit boards and switches. Environmentally-sealed electrical connectors prevent water from entering the boxes where wires pass through. We work closely with sponsors like Molex to ensure that our connectors and cables are lightweight, easy to use, and protected from the elements.

Windshield wipers are impractical for weight, power, and aerodynamic reasons; therefore, a coating like Rain-X is applied to the windshield to keep it rain and fog free. In recent years, treadles tires have been banned from competition, as treaded tires provide more wet-weather traction while still maintaining low rolling resistance.

The best solution to keeping the car protected from water, of course, is to spend as little time driving in the rain as possible. Thanks to our team’s meteorologist, we can plan our race speeds so that we spend more time in the sun and less time going through stormy, wet weather!

Steve Hechtman is a 2009 Michigan Engineering graduate and 3-time solar car racing veteran. As a micro-electrical engineer and driver for Continuum in 2007 and 2008, Steve Hechtman had a vested interest in keeping both the car electronics and car driver dry. During the Infinium Project, Steve served as the Project Manager, switching his focus from electrical engineering to fund-raising and team management. During the 2009 World Solar Challenge, he led the team through the Outback as they competed in one of the most intense solar car races in recent memory, ultimately securing a close third-place finish.

Steve now works as an electrical engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. From this remote location he undertook the colossal task of creating the new website and transferring all the information from the old Drupal website to this new WordPress one.  He continues to advise the team in all things website and IT.  In the future, he looks forward to traveling to Antarctica with APL to launch a giant balloon-mounted, solar-powered telescope into the stratosphere.

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Team members Paul Sorenson, Guarav Gidwani, and Andrew Huang sit on the team’s favorite couch in the wilson center and consider micro-electrical plans for the battery protection system.  Seated in the midst of them is Dr. Hahnsang Kim from the Department of  Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan.  Getting his advice on the system is just another example of the team working closely with the best minds in the field to help us build a better car.

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Although today marks a day of lasts, there’s also one notable first.  It’s the first time that the Quantum design has ever been incorporated into Nail Art.  Katie Rulkowski, an enthusiastic member of both the Business and Operations Divisions, takes a break from exam week to decorate her nails in honor of Quantum.

Yesterday was the last General Team Meeting (GTM) for the project cycle of Quantum.

Above, the team gathers for the last GTM.

Today is the last day of classes for the Winter Semester.  For those on Race Crew who are going to Australia next semester, it’s the last day of classes for quite a while.  The next time they attend a Michigan class, it’ll be 2012.  

And tomorrow marks the last day of our drawing contest.  This contest invites kids k-5 from all over the state of Michigan to submit their drawings of solar cars.  The best drawing will win a visit from the Solar Car Team to the winner’s school.  Drawings must be postmarked by April 20th to be considered.

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Despite the aggressive winds and soggy day, Solar Car drove out to MITRP LLC’s 320 acre property on Saturday in order to use one of their two test tracks.  The team was there for hours, testing Quantum for the second time since its completion.  

They tested slalom and braking, and both Joe Menzia and Troy Halm spent half an hour driving the car at 40mph as part of the driver build-up plan.  It is important that the drivers get used to driving the car at relatively high speeds and that they are comfortable with being inside of the car.  Solar Car generally has drivers adjust to the car in stages.  The drivers drive for a half hour at 30 mph, then a half hour at 35 mph, then 40 mph, and the half hour increments continue until the drivers get used to handling the car at 70 mph.

More testing will come next week as the team continues testing the reliability of the car, and building up the drivers’ experience.

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Meet the Director of the Engineering Division

It’s midnight on a Wednesday evening, but that doesn’t mean the Wilson Workspace is any less busy- if anything there’s even more commotion as the team continues with drawing up Strategy plans for racing technique, and the work on the body of the car and the battery continues. 

I had arrived unannounced around 9pm at the Wilson center to interview Santosh, hoping to catch him during a break as the night winds down.  But this is a pretty bad plan, considering the engineering division doesn’t seem to be slowing down.  At 10pm instead of leaving, the engineering division is speeding up their work as more people stream in.  And Santosh is not one for breaks- he’s leading a Strategy Division think-tank with the sharpest abstract mathematical minds and computer programmers.  About 20 of them are all squished in the small office to lay out their winning strategy.  They occasionally come out to grab another chair and wheel it in the office as the meeting expands.

As Engineering Director, Santosh is the guy who puts the plan together.  He makes sure that whatever design goals are set at the beginning of the two year project cycle actually become reality in the end.  He’s one of the driving forces behind the immense amount of work that the Engineering Division gets done, and as the work of actually building the car comes to a close, he’s gradually taking on the role of Strategy Director as well.  As Santosh leaves the strategy meeting at 11pm and emerges from the office, I snag him before his division members can get his opinion on various solar car subjects, and I ask him all about himself.  Here’s what he has to say.

“I’m a Masters student in aerospace engineering.  I graduated last semester with my undergraduate Aerospace engineering degree, and I’ll take next semester off to race in the World Solar Car Challenge in Australia before I finish the last semester of my Masters degree.”

“I was born and raised in Singapore, and I came to Michigan in 2007 for my Bachelors.  I joined solar car in 2008 as a strategist and I raced in the 2009 World Solar Challenge.  Then I joined the Engineering Division, which is where I am today.”  This is somewhat of an understatement.  Santosh is not just a part of the division- he was elected by the team as a director, which is a position that he’s held for over a year now. 

Santosh is older than the average solar car student- he’s currently 25- but he was once an annoying four-year-old kid bent on conducting experiments.   “My first ever science experiment was when I was in kindergarten.  The teacher was teaching something- I don’t remember what- and then I had an idea.  It’s a well known fact that if somebody else screams really loud, and you cover your ears, you won’t be able to hear them.” 

“I hypothesized that if I screamed really loud, and I covered my ears, no one else would be able to hear me.”

“I proceeded with the experiment, and then I took my hands off of my ears, and looked around the kindergarten classroom to see if it had worked.  It was totally silent, so I knew no one had heard me.  But then the teacher turned around from the chalkboard and said very sternly, who screamed.  The entire class was in unison when they said, Santosh.  I didn’t bother sampling another data point.”

If you ask other members of the team about Santosh, once you sift through the casual answers of, “cool,” and “awesome,” they start to get serious and tell you that he is well-respected, and decidedly hard-core.  They’ll tell you that most nights he’s the last to leave the workspace, he makes sure the work gets done, and in the Australian Outback he’s the last to complain about hard conditions.

“One early morning in Texas (during the American Solar Challenge) when I woke up and walked outside the team tent, I found him sleeping in the grass with his shoes as a pillow,” says Cole Witte, one of the Engineers, when I ask him for memorable anecdotes about Santosh.  But having spent two years in the army, which is a mandatory requirement for Singaporean natives, it takes a lot for him to register discomfort.  He remembers sleeping without a sleeping bag, tent, or pillow in the Singapore jungle, with all sorts of unpleasant poisonous insects crawling around the forest floor.  

I was collecting opinions of Santosh the day before, leaning against the makeshift tables on the main floor of the workspace, as Josh Feldman, a Solar Car veteran and university senior stood around.  We watched Santosh meticulously sweep the workspace. 

“See,” says Josh, “this is characteristic Santosh- cleaning that small pile of sanding dust and scraps on the floor before he’ll even consider washing his pants.”  Santosh’s black pants are indeed dusty from all of the sanding and bodywork that went on that day.  “But seriously,” says Josh, “Santosh has been with us since 08- ever since, his role on the the team has grown in importance.  He demonstrated the leadership qualities to be elected by the team as Engineering Director.  And he’ll soon take over as Strategy Director.”  Chris Hilger, Director of the Business Division, adds that, “he’s a brilliant engineer.  And the team definitely wouldn’t be the same without him.”

When the interview’s over, Santosh yawns.  It’s well after midnight.  You should take a break and get some sleep, I tell him.  But Santosh isn’t one for breaks.  Or sleep, for that matter.  He’s catching a bus back to central campus, where he lives, to do a few hours of school work.  “But first, I’m going to go check on the car,” he says.  And he heads downstairs to the main workspace floor, where Quantum stands fully assembled and a testament to the strong Engineering Division that Santosh leads. 

See Santosh in Action:
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Troy Halm was a member of Race Crew for the American Solar Challenge first place win, and he will be rejoining race crew for the 2011 World Solar Challenge in Australia this October.  This means he’ll be taking a semester off of school to go live in the outback.  When asked what in his solar car future he is most looking forward to, Troy says he can’t wait to zip across the outback in the solar car for thousands of miles at 70 mph.

As a sophomore Mechanical Engineer that helped design essential car parts like wheels, as well as an official driver of the solar car, Troy will be a valuable team member in Australia.

Fellow Race Crew member Evan Dougherty sits down with Troy for an interview:

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The University of Michigan Solar Car Team is proud to present its 11th car, Quantum. UMsolar is the number one team in the U.S. and has won the last 3 American Solar Challenge races.  With our newest car, Quantum, the team hopes to win the World Solar Challenge in Australia this October.

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