On Wednesday evening the Umicore Solar Team presented at Groep T in Leuven the 3 possible concepts of the new Belgian solar car. A lot of important people from industry and politics attented this session. The Design rules for the Challenge Class have changed. This year the car must be equipped with grip tires. The weight of the batteries is less. All the other safety rules (protection of pilot) are kept.All three concepts are based on three wheels because of the minimum “roll losses”. The 1st concept is the one used in the first edition the “one front wheel”. The advantages are that the visibility on the road is better because the seat is more in front of the car. The steering mechanism is easier. The area of solar cells at the backside is bigger. In this concept one can use concentrators to improve energy capture. Because during the race the sun is almost in the back, the energy capture may be significant better. In the race this can be very useful. This will be more important because the day –off (midway) will be eliminated. A drawback of this concept is that the front wheel becomes critical and is mechanically heavily charged.
The 2nd concept is the one used in the second edition. This is a “proven concept” according to the results. Two wheels are in front and one motor wheel at the backside. The 3rd concept is asymmetrical (sidecar). Because of the less frontal surface this car is aerodynamically a real “race car”... Because of the side winds during the race, the steering of the car will be more difficult. Mechanically there are some drawbacks, but these can be solved
These models are or will be used in wind tunnels to study the aerodynamic behavior. About the electronics not one word is said. This doesn’t mean they didn’t start working on it. We already had meetings and discussions about electronics and not at least about its reliability, but some project work for school is delaying the work for the solar car. Because of reliablity problems in the previous edition one has set up FMEA (Failure Mode Effective Analysis) and FMECA studies. Because of the success of the previous edition this team has the possibility to win. The target is to win. From Umicore we got the message that the solar cells will be even better.
