Nova Electric Racing – Supported by Eurocircuits

Introduction

Over the last ten years, Nova bike, a student team from TU Delft, have been designing and building a racing motorcycle.

The first designs were fitted with an engine running on bio-ethanol but three years ago the team decided to change their source of energy and design a fully-electric motorcycle.

The third iteration of the electric motorcycle is currently being design and will be racing during the Gamma Racing Days on the 17-18th August 2019.

The bike is expected to reach a top speed of over 260km/h and capable of an acceleration from 0 to 100 km/h under 3 seconds.

The Team

In order to have such a high performance superbike, you must have the adequate team.

Nova 10 has the most diverse and performing team that has ever been part of the student team.

It is composed of 18 highly motivated student from all around the world.

Their backgrounds range from Aerospace Engineering to Electrical Engineering as well as mechanical Engineering or Industrial Design studies.

The Design

In this year’s iteration of the Nova Superbike, the motor will generate up to 190 horsepower with a rear wheel torque close to 500 Nm.

This is possible thanks to the motor-controller that will feed the required current and voltage to the motor.

The battery will reach a maximum voltage of 800 V with a capacity close to 14 kWh.

Although those three components are what technically makes the bike move forward, they are not the most important part of the bike.

Instead, two specific printed circuit board came out as most important. The first one is the Safety Control Unit (SCU), the brain of the bike.

The SCU is used to ensure the safety of the bike as it can detects if something is not working properly and takes the required decisions in accordance.

The SCU of Nova 9 is displayed in the above picture, it can be seen that there are a large amount of input and outputs.

This is because it is connected to most components that makes the bike.

This includes the motor-controller, the motor, the dashboard, the battery management system, three relays, the emergency switches and so on.

As to give an example, if the cells overheat, the SCU will send a message that will be seen on the dashboard in order to notify the rider the cells are close to their limit temperature.

If the temperature of the cells increase even more, the safety control unit is programmed to switch the relays connecting the battery pack and the motor-controller.

No current can then be drawn from the cells and they can cool down safely and so avoid any damages.

At the current moment, the Safety Control Unit is being redesigned in order to fit the new components that will be equipped in this year’s superbike.

The design is based on the previous version with upgraded features that will make it even more compact and more accessible than previous year’s.

Another important component of the bike is the PCB’s carrying the battery management system (BMS) and securing the cells tabs.

The BMS ensures that the entire battery pack and more specifically, each set of cells are working at the same state.

As so it monitors the cells state, balances the cells, as well as report sets of data to the SCU such as the state of charge, the temperature, voltage and current of the battery pack.

It is a crucial element since it gives the team the ability to monitor the performance of the battery pack.

The design that was chosen is displayed here below, the bottom PCB is design to secure the cells through the slots as seen on the picture. Each PCB’s can hold on to a maximum of 18 cells.

The BMS are then soldered to the upper PCB and are then secured to the lower one in such manner to make contacts with the cells. The upper stacks are designed as displayed here below.

The Support

Such a project would not exist without the support and experience of professional companies.

The entire team of Nova Electric Racing wishes to greatly thank Eurocircuits for the numerous opportunities they have given to the team.

Without the quality of the PCB’s delivered for the SCU and the BMS, the Nova bike would not be able to function at all and be as high-performance as it is right now.