Formula Student Team Delft in collaboration with Eurocircuits

“In order to have clean air in cities, you have to go electric”

– Elon Musk

“When you race to win, second or third place is not enough”

– Ayrton Senna

Formula 1 can be seen as the pinnacle of the automotive industry. Revolutionary technologies, developed by their top-engineers, are the source of inspiration for everyday road cars.

Formula Student Team Delft can be seen as the little sister variant, a dreamteam made up of aspiring engineers with various disciplines, all working together to build the fastest student car, year after year. Currently, we are working on the DUT22: an electronic race car win extraordinary acceleration and cornering capabilities. This year, we aim to with the biggest formula student competition in the world; FSG. It is quite the challenge, the last time we did was with the DUT15…

We have been collaborating with Eurocircuits for years now. In order to help us win FSG, they provide us with our most valuable PCBs, which are the organs of our electronic system. This year, we even take it a step further by implementing an autonomous system, for which we need an autonomous system brake PCB, the ASB. This makes that in case of emergency, the car will not continue driving into the wall.

Next to the new ASB, we are also going to impelement more familiar PCBs. To name a couple of examples, we will again implement:

AMS (accumulator management system)

This system monitors our accumulator, in terms of voltage, temperature. If anything is out of the ordinary, the car stops.

BSPD (Brake System Plausibility Device)

The BSPD is a safety system, which monitors the power going to the motors and the brake pressure when under braking. If both signals occur at the same time, when there is power going to the motors whilst braking occurs, the car shuts off.

TSAL (Tractive System Active Light)

A very simple but very important subsystem. The light is controlled by a TSAL Driver, which monitors the status of the Powertrain. Its light emits different colours, depending on whether the car is electrically charged and ready to drive. If this system.

This year for the electronics department, will be all about production and testing of the PCB’s, to make sure our low voltage system is fully functional and finished before the first meters. It is quite the challenge, but with the help of Eurocircuits, we are already one huge step closer to our goal.