World Solar Challenge Research Articles

Scientists experiment with crowdfunding

Interactions with the public prove as rewarding as the money.Interactions with the public prove as rewarding as the money.

CFD Analysis for Merdeka 2 Solar Vehicle

Vehicle's low drag force is critical to achieve higher speed and for efficient energy usage. Most solar vehicles that participated in the World Solar Challenge event adopted the 'cockroach' shape which has been considered as the best shape to achieve optimum speed and aerodynamics characteristics. However, the team from University of Malaya decided to design their entry vehicle based on the profile of a box fish, said to possess an even lower drag coefficient value. This paper describes the aerodynamics characteristics numerical study of the solar vehicle using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code called FLUENT. The numerical computation is based on the frontal area of the vehicle and the obtained results have shown reasonable values of drag and lift coefficients when compared to ordinary road vehicles.

An optimal battery interchange policy for an electric car powered by a mobile solar power station

The World Solar Challenge is a 3000 kilometre race from Darwin to Adelaide, across the Australian continent, for solar powered racing cars. Annesley College accompanied the 2001 event in an electric car powered by batteries. While one battery was used to power the car another was charged from a solar panel carried by a mobile solar power station. When the first battery became empty the batteries were interchanged and the first battery put on charge. The process was repeated throughout the event. In this paper we find a policy for interchanging the batteries that maximises the distance travelled each day.

The Green Petrol Heads: Developing Practical Professional Engineering Skills that Generate Interest in Sustainable Engineering

SummaryIn 2007 a group of final-year honours students from the School of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Adelaide rode their biodiesel motorbike prototype (The Biobike) from Darwin to Adelaide under gruelling Australian summer conditions. They were competing in the Greenfleet Class of the 2007 Panasonic World Solar Car Challenge; a category designed to demonstrate practical, alternative energy solutions. A week later, amidst an eclectic collection of weird and wonderful vehicles, the students were thrilled to finally cross the finish line. Their relief soon turned to elation when they learnt that the extremely low net-carbon emission of the Biobike brought them victory. They had won the Greenfleet Class. Most importantly, the students’ functioning as an effective engineering team had proven that they could actively engineer alternative transport energy solutions amidst the current global energy crisis. The Hybrid Electric Solar Vehicle is another example of such a project, which while not at such an advanced stage of development as the Biobike, also promotes a self-belief in sustainable engineering, while providing an exciting opportunity for undergraduate students to apply their theoretical engineering knowledge to a true-to-life engineering team orientated project. While both of these projects have an obvious alternative energy theme, they follow the lead of the internationally acclaimed Formula SAE project, in which university teams from all over the world design and build a small race car. The Formula SAE project continues to retain is popularity among participants and sponsoring employers, because students quickly learn how to apply their knowledge to a practical engineering problem and develop valuable vocational skills, so that they will quickly begin to operate effectively in their professional engineering environment. This paper will discuss the educational merits and outcomes of these projects from the perspective of a lecturer who has supervised students in them all.

Across the Outback on Photon Alone

The paper presents the accounts on the World Solar Challenge solar cars race.

World solar challenge

In the summer of 2006 a new team consisting of students from the Delft University of Technology was formed to continue the unprecedented success of the Nuon Solar Team. The team's members represent the largest faculties of the TU Delft, these include: Aerospace, Mechanical, Maritime and Electrical Engineering as well as the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Besides technical prowess, the team's members also display organizational, creative, entrepreneurial, and practical skills that built on the unparalleled successes already achieved. The new team began work in September 2006 on a completely new design for a solar vehicle able to compete in the new "Challenge" class of the Panasonic World Solar Challenge, the premier solar car race in the world. Besides competing in this event, the team attend events around the European Union to promote innovation and continue the drive towards sustainability. On October 25th 2007, they crossed the finishline first in Adelaide, Australia, and became winners of the Panasonic World Solar Challenge. This was the fourth time in a row the Nuon Solar Team from Delft University of Technology won this prestigious race through the Australian continent.

Solar racing across Australia

Following on from our report on the US solar car race, the 7th World Solar Challenge 2003 will be held in Australia in October. This 3000 km (1900 mile) endurance race from Darwin in the north to Adelaide in the south will take place 19–27 October. This is a short news story only. Visit www.re-focus.net for the latest renewable energy industry news.

Sun Kings cross the outback [solar powered vehicles marathon

The University of Michigan's solar racing team showed its mettle in the gruelling World Solar Challenge marathon. To win the race required state-of-the-art solar cells, batteries, electronics and the integration of mechanical, aerodynamics, and materials science.

Critical Speed Control of a Solar Car

The World Solar Challenge is a 3000 km race for solar powered cars across the Australian continent from Darwin to Adelaide. Each car is powered by a panel of photovoltaic cells which convert sunlight into electrical power. The power can be used directly to drive the car or stored in a battery for later use. Previous papers (P. Howlett, P. Pudney, T. Tarnopolskaya, and D. Gates, IMA Journal of Mathematics Applied in Business and Industry vol. 8, pp. 59-81, 1997; P.G. Howlett and P.J. Pudney, Dynamics of Continuous, Discrete and Impulsive Systems vol. 4, pp. 553-567, 1998) using a simplified model of the battery, have shown that the optimal strategy is essentially a speedholding strategy. In this paper, with a more realistic model of the battery, we show that the optimal driving strategy is a critical speed strategy. For an optimal journey with no beginning and no ending the solar car must always travel at the critical speed. For an optimal journey of finite length the speed must be close to the critical speed for most of the journey. The critical speed depends on the solar power and will normally vary slowly with time.

Dauntless Dutch prevail in biennial solar car race - [News

TECH WATCH - Competing for the first time, the Dutch racing team Alpha Centauri pulled off an impressive hat trick as it won the sixth World Solar Challenge, in which, every two years, solar-powered cars race a grueling 3000 km from the north to the south of Australia. Crossing the finish line on 21 November, the sleek, three-wheeled Netherlands racer, called Nuna, set new records for time and speed, and also for distance traveled in one day.

Michigan Students Win Solar Road Race

Students from the University of Michigan are the surprise winners of this year’s American Solar Challenge, a biannual motor race in which groups build and race cars that rely solely on sunlight for fuel.The cross-country race runs along old Route 66 from Chicago, Illinois, to Claremont, California. M-Pulse, the Michigan team’s solar car, was nearly wrecked in a pre-race crash. But it crossed the finish line a full hour and 20 minutes ahead of the previous champions, the University of Missouri-Rolla, and set a new record time and speed for the event. M-Pulse averaged 40 miles per hour over the 2247-mile course.“It’s hard to believe this fantastic finish, considering the position we were in just four weeks ago,” says Nader Shwayhat, an engineering student who helped lead the team that built M-Pulse.The team plans to take on international competitors at the World Solar Challenge in Australia this November.SCHENCK & SCHENCKPPT|High resolution© 2001 American Institute of Physics.

Use of lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles

An account is given of the lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery pack used in the Northern Territory University's solar car, Fuji Xerox Desert Rose, which competed in the 1999 World Solar Challenge (WSC). The reasons for the choice of Li-ion batteries over silver–zinc batteries are outlined, and the construction techniques used, the management of the batteries, and the battery protection boards are described. Data from both pre-race trialling and race telemetry, and an analysis of both the coulombic and the energy efficiencies of the battery are presented. It is concluded that Li-ion batteries show a real advantage over other commercially available batteries for traction applications of this kind.

History of the electric automobile: hybrid electric vehicles

This survey of electric vehicles focuses on those vehicles which harness the potential of electricity when combined with another energy source. The book provides detailed information on the historical development of capacitors, engines, flywheels, fuel cells, inductive charging, solar cells, and the application of each to hybrid electric vehicles. Sections include: the research undertaken in previous centuries which led to the first electric vehicle in 1881; historical efforts to overcome the limited range of electric vehicles (including examinations of the round spring, the Stirling engine, the flywheel, solar cells, and more); the growing interest in races featuring hybrid electric vehicles (including the Australian World Solar Challenge races, and the American Tour de Sol).

Road Slope Information from GPS-Derived Trajectory Data

The World Solar Challenge was held in 1996, and will be held again in 1999. As part of the University of New South Wales solar car project, global positioning system techniques were used to determine the road slope characteristics of the Stuart Highway running north-south from Darwin to Adelaide. This data formed the basis of a geographic information system to support solar car race strategy. Motivated by this project, a new Kalman filter algorithm for road slope determination has been developed. The state vector in the Kalman filter includes the height and slope of the road, rather than the conventional parameters of height and vertical velocity. In this way the slope can be derived directly within the Kalman filter, the system equations can be more easily developed and the system noise can be significantly reduced. Numerical results confirm that the new Kalman filter algorithm can be easily implemented, and that the accuracy of road slope determination is improved. This algorithm is appropriate for any survey application concerned with the determination of vertical profile.

Development of aerodynamics for a solar race car

The dominant factor of a solar car is running resistance, especially aerodynamic drag; and the reduction of the C D (drag coefficient)× A (frontal projected area) value is a crucial task to maximize the performance of a solar car. This paper will introduce the aerodynamic approach of the '96 Honda solar car which participated in the World Solar Challenge, the world's top solar car race.

Solar car cruising strategy and its supporting system

Cruising strategy in a solar car race consists of the techniques used to generate as much power as possible under fluctuating weather conditions while cruising at the highest speed possible with minimal motor power consumption. This paper introduces the Cruising Strategy Supporting System used by the Honda Team for the third World Solar Challenge as a concrete example. This system consists of three base elements: Supervision Support, Cruising Simulation and Powder/Speed Optimizing Control.

20 000 PERL silicon cells for the ‘1996 World Solar Challenge’ solar car race

High-efficiency large-area PERL (passivated emitter, rear locally diffused) cells have been produced at the University of New South Wales in a sufficient quantity to supply three cars for the 1996 World Solar Challenge (WSC) solar car race. Almost 20 000 cells were fabricated, with designated illumination area efficiency ranging up to 24%. A flat-plate module made from 50 such cells fabricated early in the production process and having an average efficiency of just over 23% has demonstrated a record efficiency of 22.7%. The energy conversion efficiency of a typical cell fabricated late in the production process was subsequently measured as 23.7% at Sandia National Laboratories under standard test conditions (1 kW m−2, global AM1.5 spectrum at 25°C) based on the designated illumination area of 21.6 cm2. Honda's Dream and Aisin Seiki's Aisol III were two vehicles using these PERL cells, and were placed first and third, respectively, in the race. Honda also set a new record by reaching Adelaide in 4 days with an impressive average speed of 90 km h−1 over the 3010-km course. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Challenge of the [IKUEI NEO II

The World Solar Challenge is the most renowned solar car race in the world. Since 1987 it is held once in three years in Australia. For the first time we challenged in the 4th WSC 1996. We crossed the entire continent from the North to the South, and placed 10th in the whole classification and got the 3rd prize in the 2 seater class. Our team had thirteen members mainly of the fifth and the forth years of "Kohsen" (about 18-20 years old students), besides post-graduate researcher, graduates and professors. They planned, designed and manufactured the new machine "Ikuei Neo II". We are proud that many students and graduates cooperated positively with us on this project. We hereby present this abstract on the "Ikuei Neo II" solar car, the racing event and its records.

Optimal driving strategy for a solar car on a level road

Every three years, solar cars from all over the world come to Australia to participate in the World Solar Challenge. In 1993 there were 52 cars in the race. Five cars finished within five days, each one breaking the previous race record and achieving an average speed exceeding 70 km/h. The performance of these cars depends on many factors: power, aerodynamics, traction efficiency, weight, reliability, and (not least of all) driving strategy. On a level road, the optimal driving strategy for an ideal car is essentially a speed-holding strategy. For a real car with inefficient energy storage, however, there are two distinct holding speeds. The lower speed is held when solar power is low and must be supplemented from stored energy. The upper speed is held when solar poler is high, and excess energy is stored.

Design of an in-wheel motor for a solar-powered electric vehicle

The design of an in-wheel electric motor for the solar-powered vehicle ‘Aurora’, entered in the 1996, 3010 km Darwin – Adelaide World Solar Challenge solar car race is described. Compared to other entrants in the race, the brushless DC motor is more efficient (97.5% compared to 92–95%) and lighter (8.3 kg compared to 12–16 kg) than all other direct-drive motors, and more efficient than all motor/gear combinations. This is achieved by the use of high flux-density rare-earth magnets, and computer aided optimisation of an axial-flux configuration consisting of a Halbach magnet array and an ironless air-gap winding.