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The Arizona Solar Racing Team
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The Arizona Solar Racing Team at the University of Arizona is a completely student managed organization with the goals of creating a solar car for competition and educating both students and the public. The design and construction of a solar powered vehicle provides the student members of the team with an educational opportunity that extrapolates upon the engineering knowledge taught in the classroom. Students learn to work in a team, while solving real-world engineering problems. They learn the importance of communication as well as many aspects of marketing and business.
Founded in 1997, The Arizona Solar Racing Team has made tremendous progress in a very short period of time. In under two years, the team was able obtain lab space on campus, raise $120,000 dollars in money and materials, design and build a solar car as well as compete in their first race, Sunrayce 99. The team placed 24th, the best of any new team, but strives to do better in the next race: Sunrayce 2001.
A typical race, such as Sunrayce or World Solar Challenge, consists of a little more than a week of racing, in which teams will travel more than a thousand miles. The sole source of energy allowed for the race comes from the initial charge in the car’s batteries and any energy that can be taken from the sun. Conserving energy wherever possible becomes imperative during cloudy weather or periods where extra speed is necessary.
As a part of the strategy for the next race, the team plans to build a comprehensive and robust electrical system that will provide much needed information about the car’s condition. Various levels of voltage and current, as well as temperature, will be collected throughout the car, allowing accurate prediction of battery state of charge and detection of possible problems before they become severe issues. The brains behind this system will be PIC microcontrollers.
The PICmicro® microcontrollers (MCU) will simplify the design of the electrical system because their many integrated features, such as analog to digital converters and bus protocols such as SPI and I2C, allow for a lower chip count and lessened development time. The integrated sleep feature of the PICmicro® MCU will allow the electrical system to draw minimal amounts of power, a prime concern in solar racing as the solar array only provides about 1000W to work with. Minimizing power consumption in the electrical system will allow for longer and faster travel.
Development time is a critical constraint for the team as each race is two years apart. Design, manufacturing, and testing must fit into this two-year window to ensure that the car is reliable. To accomplish their design goals the team will adopt a modular design approach, in which each system, except for the most critical, can be swapped out on the fly with no effect on overall system performance.
The team feels that it can do well in its next race, given the foundation of the project that is already in place. Many lessons from their last racing experience have fostered new ideas for the next car and the project as a whole. Methods for increasing team efficiency as well as fun are being implemented, to create an experience that is both memorable and rewarding.
For more information about the University of Arizona Solar Car project, visit www.solarcar.arizona.edu
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