From 0 to 100 kph in less than 3 seconds

The DUT12 student team of the University of Technology (TU) Delft will push the limits of electric driving with a four-wheel drive racing car. As the DUT Racing Team has already won the worldwide Formula Student competition several times over the past years, the challenge and pressure on a new team is increasing all the time. Team Manager Max Wink and Chief Engineer Richard Kruithof explain how, and why, their team expects to prolong the world title once again this year.

Global design competition

The DUT12 team will represent the TU Delft this year in the challenging and highly competitive Formula Student design competition, in which approximately 468 universities and colleges participate worldwide. This competition is all about designing, constructing, testing and marketing a formula-type of racing car, which will be assessed on speed, design, safety, reliability, costs and various driving characteristics.

Although the role of the Netherlands in the automotive world is perhaps becoming less significant, our future engineers still belong to the best in the world, as demonstrated by their leading position in the Formula Student world ranking. The colleagues from the Delft Nuon Solar Team have also prominently positioned our students’ knowledge level and problem-solving abilities on the world map, by winning the World Solar Challenge several times.

"In the twelve years that our team has participated in the Formula Student match, we have already surprised the competition several times with a remarkable design", Wink explains. "In 2003 with a lightweight vehicle weighing only 139 kilograms, in 2007 with a bio fuel car and last year with our first electrically driven racing car. We have once again started from scratch this year with concocting the minimal requirements for designing and creating the best electric racing car. Or, in other words, after the first experiences in 2011, we are trying to optimally use all possibilities and benefits of electric driving. This has resulted in our DUT12 car, which was presented at the end of December."

Downward spiral

A downward spiral is more in line with the current economy than with the development of a new racing car. The DUT12 team nevertheless uses this term for pushing their boundaries in the design process.

"In 2003 the judges were baffled by the DUT3, which merely weighed 139 kilograms", Kruithof says. "At the time, this was accomplished by minimising the use of material by using Dassault Systèmes’ Abaqus simulation software. In other words, removing any excess material in all areas where, according to the stress analysis, this was not required. We still use the same simulation software, except for now in combination with CATIA V6 for 3D designs and ENOVIA V6 for central data management and collaboration between the 80 students involved in the project. Saving weight in car design generally results in less energy consumption, but for electrical driving this requires also less, or lighter, batteries, which again leads to weight-saving. Furthermore, less weight needs to be moved when accelerating and braking, causing the car to perform better in these tests. By looking at matters in this way, we have this year once again succeeded in designing a lightweight racing car that weighs only 170 kilograms.

Other special characteristics of the DUT12 are the four-wheel drive with a separate electromotor per wheel and the use of 'torque vectoring' technology, so that our racing driver can manoeuvre through bends faster. Finally, we are not buying the engines this year, as we will develop these ourselves."

Challenging and educational project

Participating in the DUT Racing Team is a valuable learning experience for the students. As front runner in the ranking, the ideas and performances of the Delft team are closely watched worldwide. Nine core team members put their study on halt for one year. They are assisted by approximately seventy other students from all required technical disciplines to achieve the best performances, which this year include a 'torque vectoring' specialist and a student specialising in lightweight designs at the ALE (Advanced Lightweight Engineering) company. Apart from the best people, the team also needs the best means.

Dassault Systèmes’ partner Keonys has therefore ensured that, via sponsoring, they can use the V6 design, simulation, testing and management software, which is also used by McLaren for designing their Formula 1 racing cars, as well as by manufacturers such as BMW, Bentley, Citroën Peugeot, Jaguar Land Rover and other producers of the latest generation of car models. "The fact that we seek the boundaries of this software makes the knowledge and experience that we gain in this project directly practically applicable", Wink adds. "This also applies for the used batteries.

Being able to rapidly charge and discharge energy is of vital importance for us. That is why we ended up with the Chinese manufacturer Melasta. During our tests at KEMA their batteries performed even better than what was specified. As a result of our tests, we also brought Melasta in contact with KEMA."

Short development and production cycle

The design, testing and construction of a new car for the Formula Student competition is not only a challenge in technical aspects, but also with regard to organisation. There are only ten months for the whole cycle! The concept phase takes place from early September up to, and including, November.

After this phase, the ideas are processed into a 3D design model, which is finalised by the beginning of February and then we're going to produce all parts until the middle of April. Assembling and testing subsequently takes place up until July, as all the important competitions in Europe take place in the summer.

A transfer to the new team of the 'lessons learned' takes place in the final phase. "Our competition consists of multiple events that you can participate in worldwide", Wink clarifies. "The largest competitions in Europe take place at the Silverstone Circuit in England and at Hockenheim in Germany. Everyone sees this last event as the world championship. By starting from scratch this year, more parts have been newly designed and less standard parts have been purchased.

With the many functions in CATIA and Abaqus, we have been able to elaborately simulate and validate the correct functioning of these parts beforehand, and so the production process has been prepared better than ever before. With a capacity of 160 PK in a racing car that weighs just 170 kilograms, separate wheel drive for taking perfect bends and a 0-100 acceleration in less than 3 seconds, we are in theory once again in a very strong position!"