Defining Race Strategy for World Solar Challenge

PREPARED BY:
DEFINING RACE STRATEGY FOR
WORLD SOLAR CHALLENGE

TABLE OF CONTENT:
ABSTRACT......................................................................................................................
INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................
SOLAR CAR RACING STRATEGY...................................................................................
THE RACE MODEL.........................................................................................................
WEATHER DATA...........................................................................................................
CALCULATION OF POWER FACTOR............................................................................
OPTIMIZATION PROCESS............................................................................................
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................
REFERENCE....................................................................................................................

Abstract:
Solar cars are designed and developed because of their energy efficiency and ability
to run under different climatic conditions. From precision manufacturing to
aerodynamic structure, tire selection to race day strategy, weather condition to road
condition plays an important role in defining the race strategy. To win the race,
racing team must excel on the razor’s edge, balancing control, high end technology
support, real time quick decision. Even in 2 degree temperature change can affect
the tire degradation, pit stop strategic and car set up. A computational car model is
developed based on the weather condition and road condition taking into data for 5
years.
Introduction:
Solar cars are well know for its aim for using alternative energy option and energy
efficiency. The collection of accurate data will inform the exact operating condition
of the car and its system through out the race. This will allow designers to tune each
element of the car to operate at peak performance under exactly the right condition.
This will mean big efficiency improvement as well as making robustness of the car is
well inline with what will be required for the race strategy.
The vehicle design principle is based on reliability, energy efficient and robustness. It
has a ability to run at high speed under different climatic condition and road
structure.
A weather station is mounted on the support vehicle providing met data to help
optimize power for solar powered cruise vehicle. These weather station measure the
current data and send signal to the vehicle controller for efficient running of the
vehicle.
Solar Car Racing Strategy:
Defining the solar powered car race strategy is to control the energy optimization,
where the velocity patter plays a very important role. Also the distance, wind
velocity, road profile and the sun position changes the energy efficiency of the
vehicle. [1]
The key strategy reason for weather monitoring is as it is used wind speed and the
direction data and the sun position to adjust the predicted power to drive and
confirm that the solar car is consuming power at the expected rate as indicated
during the design stage of the solar powered vehicle. [3] It is very important to
monitor this to make sure that small issue with the car that could increase the power
to drive, like low tire pressure, brake rubbing, motor controller De-callibration etc.
Secondly it is used wind and pyrometeric data to characterize the accuracy of online
weather data source, which will be beneficial for future race. Because of the variety
of cloud cover and wind pattern, it can learnt a lot about how to co-relate cloud