Bi-State Green Expo

The team has just returned from participating in the Bi-state green expo in Belleville, IL. The team put together a display of our new car, and informational posters about the projects the team is currently working on. We had a poster on our carbon fiber process, our solar cell encapsulation process, and even a presentation about the stress analysis of the frame. We loved being able to explain our project to many people in the bi-state area. I know we all look forward to showing everybody our completed vehicle in the near future. =)

Solar Cell Encapsulation

This past Thursday, a team of 4 members left for Devens, MA. We drove straight through in order to arrive at Evergreen Solar. The company was exceptionally helpful at answering all of our questions and very detailed in explaining the process they use for creating their solar cells, and the process they use for encapsulating their cells. It will be an experience we will not soon forget =)

Thank you Evergreen Solar for supporting our team!

The team now looks forward to a Soldering Party this weekend to prepare our cells for encapsulation. We will soon have our Solar Power for our car!

Progress Update (Aug 22nd-Oct 27th)

The new car is coming along well. The team came into the semester and got straight to work. We have recruited many new, dedicated members to the team by participating in the August organization fair, visiting founders hall, and participating in a bluff hall freshman event.

A project flow chart, and project timeline have been finished, and project plan assignments were handed out to assigned task leaders. The task leaders worked hard the first couple weeks to finish their project plans. We are all ready and waiting to be able to buy the materials to build each system.  In the mean time, we have been cutting the male foam replica of the body, which is step one of the body process, have built a battery box for the batteries, fixed the parking brake on the old car, and have been making our float for the parade.

The team has also participated in many community events so far. We visited Culvers with the car, and talked to a variety of people, young and old. We worked the family Casino night at the school to raise money as well.

The team also entered the SIUE annual Chili cookoff, and our solar chili won the hottest chili contest. (it wasn’t even entered in that category)

We are currently looking forward to Sunday, where we will bring the solar car to a Trunk or Treat event, and monday, we will be in the Edwardsville/Glen Carbon Halloween Parade. We chose the theme of Wile E. Coyote.

As far as work progress, we thank Evergreen Solar for donating EVA film, Solar Glass, and Taiflex substrate, for the encapsulation of our solar cells.

As soon as we order our materials, the BPS will be programmed, the windshield will be made, the array will be encapsulated and installed, the body project will be able to move to step 2, and the electrical systems will be able to start coming together. It will be a fun month of building =)

Finished Chassis!

(Michael Graham) Its been a long time since I’ve had the time to update the website, and this will be my last post.  The chassis (my senior design project) is complete now and it is everything we wanted it to be.  This project is arguably the best chassis the SIUE School of engineering has ever produced, and heres why: The frame is made entirely of 1″ OD 1/8″ wall 6061 aluminum, which has a greater strength to weight ratio than the popular chrome-molly steel.  The design of the frame reduced stress concentrations and dangerous deformations around the driver when compared to the old solar car.  The whole car has a very small frontal area to reduce wind resistance.  The chassis has a low polar moment of inertia which allows it to make turns quickly (so its more like a mazda miata and less like a buick).  The chassis is designed so that the finished car will have a center of gravity slightly ahead of its neural steering point, which means it will understeer slightly (thats the best you can do with a car).  The steering system satisfies perfect Ackerman condition for all steering angles up to 10 deg and is still close to Ackerman up to 35 deg.  The steering column has ZERO play in it and the steering wheel is removable.  The drivers compartment is very comfortable and the pedals (which are both on the right side) are both adjustable.  Getting in and out of the car is easy too.  The front suspension (double A-arm unequal lengths not parallel) has ZERO bump steer over its entire 3″ of travel.  The single rear wheel on a swing arm doesnt suffer the effects of roll steer. Overall the suspension has the appropriate stiffness, lots of adjust-ability, clean non-binding movements, and great camber control on turns.  All three wheels have brakes.  On the whole every part was machined and/or welded to perfection by experienced fabricators.  The project was selected as the only mechanical engineering project to go to the senior project showcase. My senior design team is really proud of the work we’ve done on this project and we hope the chassis will allow SIUE to competitively compete with other schools.

2010-2011 Solar Car Chassis Senior Design team-Michael P Graham, Grant Irvine, Schott Guehne, Troy Howell.

Cool New Car Designs

(Michael Graham)>>Hey Everybody, we’ve got some new news, the team plans to attend the 2011 Formula Sun Grand Prix track race in early May, (provided that we attain the necessary monetary support).   We will be taking our current solar car, cougar cruiser II, which we haven’t professionally raced with yet. This will be a great opportunity for the team to test their engineering skills by having to make sure the car will pass all of the engineering scrutinization or ‘Scrutineering’ for short.  It will also give our team members a chance to get hands-on experience with competitive solar car racing.  The race date is actually scheduled during finals week of the spring semester.    The race will be particularly good news for our sponsors because the car with their logo’s on it will be going to an event and getting a lot of attention!     Speaking of our sponsors, the D&R Machine Co, who has generously offered to machine our hubs and spindles for us, will get the chance to start work soon because the large aluminum stock we ordered is due very soon!  Below are a couple pictures of the hubs and spindles, and below that is some cool solar car concept art, drawn by our mechanical director. Be on the lookout for some 3D models of the new chassis coming soon!

Spindles (below)

Meeting Notes 10-22-10

(Michael Graham)

**Good News:

1. Mikes senior design group is making headway and is on schedule with design work.

2. Last i heard the plans for the Buffalo Wild Wings eat-to-earn-money thing is going to work out, but we do not have a firm date scheduled to my knowledge.

3. DONT forget, the rams game concession stand training is THIS WEDNESDAY at the Edward Jones Dome from 6-9.   I believe that we are meeting at 5pm or so and we will all car pool down there in our SIUE BIG BLUE VAN.   If you want to be able to attend rams games with us later in the year (and you do) you have to go through training.  SO bring a friend, girlfriend, parent, or even a stranger because this is a good money maker, its fun, and it gives YOU volunteer service hours.

4. its almost the end of October which means that we will hopefully be getting h use of our workshop back SOON.  When we do, i want to have a WORK meeting where we all get out to the shop and clean that place up!

**Updates and To Do’s:

1.Halloween Parade this Sunday, Oct 31st!  We are walking in the Edwardsville parade with the car.  Before that happens we need to paint new stuff on the sides of the car, it needs to say “Sponsor Us!”, “http://www.ee.siue.edu/~solar”  and id like to have a phone number or email address on there too.   Were also going to throw out some candy so people like us too.  It would be cool to have little buisness card thins to tape to the candy but we dont have to do that.

…..For the parade, we need to decorate the car so its not so boring too. Maybe some spider webs and a scarecrow or something.  Also, im not sure what we should wear to the event yet either.  We could either wear Halloween costumes or our nice solar car uniforms.

2.Mike thinks it would be a good idea for us to start a monthly flier to show interested people our progress.  We could just make it a word document and save it as a pdf and email it to people, because that’s free!  The flier doesn’t have to be anything crazy, just include about 2 new pictures and about a page of recent events.

3.We need to contact  mall’s ASAP and ask if we can bring our car into their mall or near an entrance on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving).  Ask for a free or reduced  price admission to do this.   Start by contacting the highest traffic malls like the galleria and St Claire Square and work your way down to Alton Square Mall until you get a YES.  Doing this will get us some attention and i bet well sell a LOT of CFL’s and some adopt-a-cells

4. This is important but the above stuff is more time critical, Mike thins it would be a good idea to organize a Trivia Night fundraiser.  It probably wouldn’t be that hard and im sure it would be worth our time from a monetary standpoint.

5. today (10-25) we got the car pretty much completely reassembled minus the bumper and side body panels.

**Other News:

1.  We found out that the 2012 ASC regulations require us to use silicon solar cells.  This is bad because we have been anticipating using higher efficiency Gallium Arcenide Cells which we also had a good deal coming to us on though ebay.   Now we may have to increase the surface area of our solar panel array to 6m^2 instead of 3m^2.   This changes our plans for the solar array support platform and the weight distribution of the car.

2. we still dont have a TIG welder lined up to use, for certain yet.  (we dont need it until December 14th though)

Welcome back BBQ Pics

JESC had their 2010 BBQ for all the engineering students yesterday.  Competing teams were encouraged to show their projects, so of course the solar car team was there.  We also had a reporter from the Alestle there interviewing members for the article that came out today.

Meeting Notes 4/23/2010

Hey team. For those of you who couldn’t make it to the meeting (most of you *evil stare*)

Here’s what was talked about.

Solar Car team

Friday April 23rd 2010

Summer and new car discussions

Summer
– there’s work to be done
•Who’s here for summer?

Talk about groups

Sign names on sheet and preference of group
•Siue-solar.clockingit.com – show demo
•Plans for summer

FINISH THE OLD CAR!!! (Cougar Cruiser II)

Complete the canopy

Waterproof

Install new battery pack

Test test test!

Impact analysis

Anything else
•

Cougar cruiser III?
– Rough timeline

Mechanical

Summer 2010:

Zack will work with art students on body design over summer. Plan to have a scale model by end of summer

Fall/Spring 2010/2011:

Design frame and suspension around body design, report with impact analysis done.

Build body – work with frame design closely

….. (more specifics to come)

Spring/Summer 2011:

Build frame / test

….. (more specifics to come)

Cougar cruiser iii or iv?
– Rough Timeline

Electrical

Summer 2010

Tweak/Install Battery pack

Install Dash

Fall/Spring 2010/2011

Build CSIRO motor and test

Build battery pack maybe…

Design wiring schematic and electronics for driver

…. (more specifics to come)

Spring/Summer 2011

Add solar cells to body

Add electronics to car

…. (more specifics to come)

Cougar cruiser III?
– Rough Timeline

Logisitics

Summer 2010

Help other groups

Fall/Spring 2010/2011

Help other groups

Spring/Summer 2011

Ramp up for 2011 races

Cougar cruiser III?
– Rough Timeline

Financial

Summer 2010

GRANT REQUESTS!!!

Propaganda for summer

Nice professional poster (have Steve print it on the plotter) – get laminated on cardboard (or something)

Get new letters done and sent for approval

Telethon? – Alumni

Fall/Spring 2010/2011

Send approved letters

Setup other fundraising events on campus (while its nice out)

Spring/Summer 2011

???

Lets brain storm!

Cougar cruiser III

Brainstorm on the 3 wheel design. It was pretty unanimous to go with front 2 wheels stearing and rear fixed drive wheel. Dr. Lozowski poped in an hr late to the meeting, but offered some advise, we need to try to balance the weight around the center (which we planned on). I wanna make the who thing as low to the ground as possible without causing exess drag.

Also we should simulate the body using comsol, a software we can get for free after going to their little training seminar (which kevin will work on the logistics of sending a few people up there to take the class and its free)

That’s about it, i’ll be sending clockingit logins to the people who are going to be here over the summer. If you missed the meeting because you forgot (almost you jake) then let me know and I’ll throw you on the list.

Thanks all! Looking foward to working with you this summer!

–
Dustin Sanders
Computer/Electrical Engineering
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Director of SIUe’s Solar Car Team
www.ee.siue.edu/~solar

Feb 15-19

This week’s Goals:
1) Mechanical Report Team – UniGraphics drawings (8 of them?), Impact Analysis, Material Specifications, Intro update, body/suspension into UG,….
2) Body Team -solar panel locks, plexiglass cockpit, cockpit frame.
3) Fundraising Team – Grant proposals
4) Electrical Team -fixing MPPT’s, Rewire Car, LED Lights, Cockpit controls
5) Pit Crew – figure out why we keep getting flat tires

I plan to visit some classrooms this week and next to recruit new members. I’m going to ECE211, and perhaps some business classes. Anyone who cares to join me, let me know!

Anyone who wants to help on ANYTHING listed above, OR start new projects listed on the “Timeline” (in the EB), OR anyone who wants to develop their own project, let me know!!!

Quick Summary of our tasks…

Listed by team…
1) Mechanical Report Team – Center of Gravity calcs, loading conditions, UniGraphics drawings (8 of them?), Impact Analysis, Material Specifications, Intro update, body/suspension into UG,….
2) Body Team – Finish CF body, solar panel locks, build aluminum step, plexiglass cockpit, cockpit frame.
3) Fundraising Team – Grant proposals, solicitation letters
4) Communications Team – develop list of CB/Ham equipment.
5) Electrical Team – Battery Packs, Charge Redistribution System, BPS, Battery Report, Solar Report, fixing MPPT’s, Rewire Car, LED Lights, Cockpit controls

Anyone who wants to help on ANYTHING listed above, OR start new projects listed on the “Timeline” (in the EB), OR anyone who wants to develop their own project, let me know!!!