Team from left to right: Jason Smith, Stephen Hubert, Chris Hendricks, James McKenna

1 Project Overview

The Formula SAE series is a world-wide series of competitions that challenge students to design, manufacture and race small “Formula-style” race cars. Every year, more than 430 teams from around the world compete in the nine competitions across the Americas, Europe and Asia. Each competition consists of a variety of events, from timed laps in the car, to detailed presentations on the engineering design and cost breakdown of the vehicle.

Oregon State has been fielding cars every year since 1989. In 2009-2010, the BA Racing Team from the Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg-Ravensburg (DHBW-R), Germany, and the Beaver Racing Team from Oregon State University (OSU) merged to become Global Formula Racing (GFR), the first international entity in Formula SAE/Formula Student.

The 2010-2011 racing year differs from previous years in that Global Formula Racing will be engineering a high-performance electric vehicle in addition to the combustion car. The scope of our project will include the design and implementation of an accumulator (battery) system and related components for the vehicle. The car will be required to pass a technical inspection and safety of the implementation of the high voltage system will be critically important in order to compete. The components to be designed and built for this project include the battery pack and monitoring/containment system, an off-car charging system designed for the power supply available at competition, an on-board battery cell balancing circuit, and required safety systems (emergency shutdown switches, circuit isolation, etc.). A kinetic energy recovery circuit using the electric motor as a generator may be implemented if time and cost constraints permit. The information gathered by the battery monitoring system will be communicated to a data acquisition system over a wired local network on the vehicle; this will primarily be used to ensure the battery is in a safe condition during operation. The entire system will be designed to be fail-safe and will be in complete compliance with the Formula Student Electric Germany (FSEG) rules.

The power train systems will be developed in collaboration with another team at Oregon State University and a student engineering team from Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg-Ravensburg (DHBW-R) in Germany. Input will be given regarding motor selection as this will directly impact the battery requirement for this project.

After consulting the 2010 Formula Student Electric Germany rulebook, the 2011 rulebook addendum and our customer - the GFR ePowertrain team, the following list of project requirements was compiled:

* Must meet all rules and regulations - The battery management system (BMS) must meet all rules and regulations specified within the 2010 Formula Student Electric Germany rulebook as well as the 2011 rulebook addendum

* Cell voltage measurement - The BMS must measure the cell voltage of every cell to keep the cells inside the allowed minimum or maximum cell voltage of any cell with respect to the data sheet

* Accumulator temperature measurement - The BMS must also continuously measure the temperatures of critical points of the accumulator to prevent the accumulator from thermal runaway

* Module communication - The BMS must be capable of shutting down the tractive system, if critical values are detected

* CAN Communication - Vehicle controls will utilize a CAN communication interface and will require data from the battery monitoring system

* Modularity - Each accumulator must be monitored by a battery management system (BMS)

* Cell voltage balancing - Battery cell voltages must be balanced to preserve the life of the battery

2 Background Research
3 System Requirements and Desired Features
4 Design Solutions
5 Top Level Block Design

5.1 High Voltage Battery Cell
5.2 Chassis
5.3 BMS Chip
5.4 Temperature Sensor
5.5 Slave Micro Controller
5.6 Slave uC Software
5.7 MUX
5.8 CAN Transceiver
5.9 Low Voltage Battery
5.10 Master Micro Controller
5.11 Master uC Software
5.12 Voltage Regulator

6 Testing
7 Project Timeline
8 System Test Evidence
9 Expo Materials
10 Team

Project Video

Click on the image below to watch the video

Project Mentor

Dr. Robert Paasch
Associate Professor
paasch(AT)engr.orst.edu

Project Members

Chris Hendricks
Senior in Integrated Circuits
hendricc(AT)onid.orst.edu

Stephen Hubert
Senior in Computers and Networks
huberts(AT)onid.orst.edu

James McKenna
Senior in Signals and Systems
mckennja(AT)onid.orst.edu

Jason Smith
Senior in Energy Systems
smitjaso(AT)onid.orst.edu

11 Sponsors

CADSoft USA
Website:http://www.cadsoftusa.com/index.htm

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Electronic Sub-Assembly Manufacturing (ESAM)
Website:http://www.esam.com

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