Design and implementation of the first Duoc-UC's solar energy powered car

Rally racing in solar-powered cars has taken off in recent years in order to demonstrate that green mobility with zero carbon emissions is feasible. The Solar Atacama Race is one of such competitions, taking the participants over 1.400 kms through the driest desert in the world. In this context, this paper outlines the design and implementation process of a solar -and pedal-powered hybrid car built by undergraduate engineering students. The designing steps, components selection and manufacturing process that lead to the implementation of a low-cost prototype are explained. Moreover, details and lessons learned from the first participation and plans for future work are discussed.

[1]  Raghu Mangu,et al.  Design, Development and Optimization of Highly Efficient Solar Cars: Gato del Sol I-IV , 2010, 2010 IEEE Green Technologies Conference.

[2]  O. Ustun,et al.  Energy Management Method for solar race car design and application , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Electric Machines and Drives Conference.

[3]  G. S. Wright.  Optimal energy management for solar car race , 1996, Proceedings of the 39th Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

[4]  Greg A. Jamieson,et al.  Ecological interface design for solar car strategy: From state equations to visual relations. , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics.

[5]  S. Tadakuma,et al.  Driving Performances of Solar Energy Powered Vehicle with Novel Maximum Power Tracking Control for a Solar Car Rally , 2006, 2006 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology.

[6]  Wenjun Gu,et al.  Aerodynamic design optimization of race car rear wing , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Computer Science and Automation Engineering.

[7]  Jia Qian,et al.  Aerodynamics analysis on solar car body based on FLUENT , 2012, World Automation Congress 2012.

[8]  N. Alnunu,et al.  Design of Qatar University's first solar car for Shell Eco-marathon competition , 2012, 2012 First International Conference on Renewable Energies and Vehicular Technology.