0 Appreciate Project

UNICAL Reparto Corse

Since 2005, Unical Reparto Corse (URC) is the racing team of the University of Calabria. The project is headed by Professor Maurizio Muzzupappa who, as Faculty Advisor, supports the students. The team, divided into several groups according to a proper organizational chart, designs and builds a Formula SAE racing car in order to compete in international competitions helded, in general, in the most important F1 circuits.

The competitions are structured into static events, which include checking the car is rules compliant, cost presentation, business pesentation and design presentation (in which each department submits to judges the work carried out and the design/work process followed to create the car) and in dynamic events, which includes an acceleration race, a skidpad, the autocross and the endurance (a race lasting 22km).

The team always try to improve the projects and beat its limits, so after the great result achieved in the 2022 season (3rd place overall at Formula SAE Italy), the team decided to start a new challenge designing its first Formula Student Electric car.

This implies the need for many more custom circuits and PCBs which must be made with high quality standards and we think thath PCBWay could help us with this.

Here there are some examples of the boards we have designed:

1. PDM

2. TSAL

3. Voltage Indicator

4. BMS slaves

PDM

The Power Distribution Module is a smart circuit that control the low voltage electric load, such as sensors, water pumps and fans, via solid state relay controlled by a microcontroller. This communicates via CANBUS with the Vehicle Control Unit, that switch on or off the load and receive as feedback the current absorbed other than information about the state of the PDM itself.

TSAL

The TSAL is mandatory for the Formula Student Rules, and it indicates the Tractive System status via a light indicator mounted on the main hoop of the vehicle. It’s composed of three boards that check the state of the AIRs (Accumulator Isolation Relays), the voltage at the vehicle side of the AIRs and across the DC-link capacitors and compute the logic decision in order to indicate the correct state.

Voltage Indicator

The voltage indicator, mandatory for the Formula Student Rules, illuminates itself whenever a voltage greater than 60 VDC. It must be hard-wired electronics without software control, directly and only supplied by the TS from the vehicle side of the AIRs, and always working, even if the accumulator is disconnected from the LVS or removed from the vehicle. For this reason, it integrates a DC-DC Flyback converter to supply the logic and the indicator with an isolated low voltage.