Blue Sky Solar Racing

Introducing Viridian: U of T's Blue Sky Solar Racing unveils its latest solar car

Romi Levine — Wed, 03 Jul 2019 15:27:57 +0000

Introducing Viridian: U of T's Blue Sky Solar Racing unveils its latest solar car Romi Levine Wed, 07/03/2019 - 11:27

Nick Iwanyshyn

Romi Levine

Topic

Our Community

Blue Sky Solar Racing

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Research & Innovation

Sustainability

Undergraduate Students

A sleek, bullet-shaped vehicle will be zooming across the Australian Outback this fall, harnessing the power of the sun to make it through the toasty terrain.

The solar car is the latest model created by ��Ƶ’s Blue Sky Solar Racing, a team of undergraduate students from the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering who build and race solar-powered vehicles.

Viridian, the 10^th car built by the team in 23 years, will be put to the test during the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, a 3,000-kilometre race from Darwin to Adelaide that takes place Oct. 13-20.

The car has four square metres of silicon solar cells, a new electrical system and a design the team hopes will prove to be its most aerodynamic model yet.

“The team’s objective is to promote and provide students with an opportunity to grow and develop themselves outside of the classroom as well as to promote sustainable technology through the building and designing and racing of solar-powered race cars,” says Hubaab K. Hussain, managing director of Blue Sky Solar Racing and a mechanical engineering student.

U of T's Blue Sky Solar Racing team unveils Viridian at the Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

U of T's Blue Sky Solar Racing team unveils its newest vehicle

ullahnor — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 14:09:29 +0000

U of T's Blue Sky Solar Racing team unveils its newest vehicle

ullahnor Tue, 08/15/2017 - 10:09

Cutline

The Blue Sky Solar Racing team gathers behind Polaris, the vehicle they will enter into the 2017 Bridgestone World Solar Challenge (photos by Roberta Baker)

Tyler Irving

Author legacy

Tyler Irving

Topic

Breaking Research

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Blue Sky Solar Racing

Subheadline

Ninth-generation solar vehicle to race 3,000 kilometres across Australia in the 2017 World Solar Challenge

U of T Blue Sky Solar Racing team revealed Polaris, its ninth-generation vehicle, at a showcase event this week.

“Polaris, the north star, has guided northern adventurers for centuries,” says Blue Sky managing director Frank Gu, a fourth year undergraduate student. “We hope that she will guide us toward a top five finish at the 2017 Bridgestone World Solar Challenge.”

Blue Sky Solar Racing remains the only Canadian team of more than 40 in the competition, including groups from the United States, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia and many other countries.

The U of T team placed 12th in the 2015 competition and 8th in 2013. Last, year, they placed third in the American Solar Challenge, an eight-day race covering more than 3,000 kilometres through the American Midwest.

Gu says that the team, consisting of students in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, made major upgrades to the solar, electrical and mechanical systems in preparation for the five-day, 3,000-kilometre race across the Australian Outback.

“The overall aerodynamic packaging has been preserved, including the way the shell adds to its structural strength,” says Gu. “And of course, it has four wheels and a similar mechanical layout. But everything else, inside and out, is new.”

This includes a state-of-the-art silicon solar cells, manufactured by industry partner SunPower, that achieve greater than 24 per cent efficiency. It also includes new lithium-ion batteries and a new brushless DC electric motor, replacing the previous models, which were ten years old.

“With this motor, the magnetics actually slide in and out, similar to how a gearshift works on a car,” says Gu. “It allows for us to adapt to different situations: high-efficiency cruising, climbing hills or overtaking our competitors.”

Gu has been running the Blue Sky Solar Racing team for two years, taking over just after the previous World Solar Challenge in 2015, where he was part of the crew. Managing a team of up to 100 team members in addition to his own studies has been a real challenge, but Gu takes it in stride.

“Every day there is a list of things I need to do, and I just keep doing it,” he said.

This year, the team’s goal is to crack the top five.

“Everything that we’ve done so far, every design decision, every aspect of the car that’s been worked on, has been done with that objective in mind,” says Gu.

The project hasn’t been without its challenges: for example, the recent political turmoil in Qatar affected the logistics of shipping the vehicle to Australia for the race. But Gu says that’s part of why he signed up in the first place.

“Managing a team like this gives you a really good understanding of how to make things flow in the world, how to manage people and how to make a business run,” he says. “That’s better than any business course you could take.”

Follow the Blue Sky Solar Racing team on Twitter and Facebook.

Blue Sky Solar Racing celebrates 20th anniversary

ullahnor — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 20:57:54 +0000

Blue Sky Solar Racing celebrates 20th anniversary

ullahnor Thu, 11/17/2016 - 15:57

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(photo courtesy of Blue Sky Solar Racing)

Alicia Sgromo

Author legacy

Alicia Sgromo

Topic

Blue Sky Solar Racing

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Over its two-decade history, the ��Ƶ’s Blue Sky Solar Racing Team has faced its share of challenges and triumphs, but one thing has remained constant – the team keeps moving forward, always chasing the sun.

Established in 1996 as the “Blue Sky Project,” a group of intrepid U of T Engineering students designs, builds and races a car thousands of kilometres, powered only by the sun’s rays.

On Nov. 18, current Blue Sky members, team alumni, sponsors, friends and family gather together to reflect on some key moments in the team’s evolution and toast its future.

The Blue Sky Solar Racing team's latest vehicle, Horizon, makes a test run in 2016. The team is currently working on its ninth vehicle, to race at the 2017 World Solar Challenge in Australia. (photo courtesy of Blue Sky Solar Racing)

This timeline chronicles key moments in the history of Blue Sky Solar Racing:

Bronze medal finish for U of T’s Blue Sky Solar Racing team at the American Solar Challenge 2016

lanthierj — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 20:18:55 +0000

Bronze medal finish for U of T’s Blue Sky Solar Racing team at the American Solar Challenge 2016

lanthierj Mon, 08/08/2016 - 16:18

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Horizon, the solar car designed, built and raced by the ��Ƶ’s Blue Sky Solar Racing team races across Missouri on August 3 during Day 4 of the American Solar Challenge 2016 (photos courtesy: Blue Sky Solar Racing)

Engineering Strategic Communications

Author legacy

Engineering Strategic Communications

Topic

Global Lens

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Solar Racing

Blue Sky Solar Racing

The ��Ƶ's Blue Sky Solar Racing team has finished third in the American Solar Challenge – an eight-day, rally-style solar car race.

Horizon, the solar car designed, built and raced by the U of T team, zipped across the finish line Saturday to cheers and shouts from its 18-member race crew.

The event. which is divided into four stages, covers 1,975 miles (3,178 kilometres) through the American Midwest states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska, finishing at Wind Cave National Park near Hot Springs, South Dakota.

Horizon, an eighth-generation vehicle, made the trip with an official time of 62 hours, 11 minutes and three seconds, powered only by electricity generated from sunlight.

Of the 16 solar car teams from colleges and universities across Canada, the United States and Switzerland that qualified to race, only 11 completed the challenging course.

“We always knew this would be an incredible experience, but to place third is really special,” said Engineering student Frank Gu, managing director of the Blue Sky Solar Racing team. “It’s a tribute to the hard work of all the team members who have spent countless hours designing, building and testing this vehicle over the last two years.”

Blue Sky Solar Racing at the ��Ƶ

lanthierj — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 20:21:01 +0000

Blue Sky Solar Racing at the ��Ƶ

lanthierj Fri, 07/22/2016 - 16:21

Cutline

(All photos by Marit Mitchell, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering)

Arthur Kaptainis

Author legacy

Arthur Kaptainis

Topic

Global Lens

Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Blue Sky Solar Racing

Three hours before they were scheduled to set off for Pittsburgh and the American Solar Challenge, the members of the Blue Sky Racing Club had a problem.

The maximum power point tracker – the module that relays power from the solar panels on the top of the car to the various systems below, including the electric motor – was overheating.

Think of it as the solar-powered-car equivalent of heart failure.

“This is a very complicated circuit that has been optimized over a decade,” Frank Gu, the second-year electrical and computer engineering student who serves as Blue Sky managing director, explained in a remarkably calm voice.

“Our latest revision included an upgrade to the amount of power allowed on this board. But the inductor is not behaving the way it should and is getting very hot.”

Happily, swapping the inductor with a factory-made unit resolved the problem, much as a bypass (or other procedure short of a transplant) might repair a human heart.

“All of the software stuff, we can fix on the road, on the fly,” Gu added, without even a soupçon of urgency. “But we want to make sure that the hardware is OK.”

While the electrical people worked on the inductor swap, other students attended to myriad other matters in and around the Engineering Annex workshop. That’s where this undergraduate club upholds the almost two-decade-old Blue Sky tradition of manufacturing race-worthy solar-powered cars for the love of it.

“A lot of stuff we’re taking down to Pittsburgh,” noted Sean Doughty, the engineering science student in charge of mechanics and manufacturing. “As the pressure increases, everyone just keeps working. We always get it done one way or the other.”

Duties on this final morning were as fundamental as lifting and securing the 230-kilogram Horizon – as this latest edition of the Blue Sky Solar Racing car is evocatively named – into a trailer and as mundane (but crucial in their own way) as packing the sleeping bags and camping gear.

The 18 students from the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at the core of the Blue Sky team will not be sleeping at the Ramada, or even the KOA. The first overnight of the two-week-plus adventure would be on the grounds of the Pittsburgh International Speedway in Wampum, Pennsylvania, where the cars built by 20 university solar clubs from across the continent are subjected to technical compliance inspections by American Solar Challenge scrutineers.

The race (or “rayce,” as the Solar Challenge organizers cleverly render it) starts in earnest on July 30 at Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Brecksville, Ohio, with a checkpoint at Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park (where the Wright Brothers conducted many of their experiments in heavier-than-air flight).

Other stops are in Vincennes, Indiana; St. Louis and Republic (both Missouri); Topeka, Kansas; Beatrice and Gering (both Nebraska) before reaching the chequered flag on Aug. 6 at Wind Cave National Park in Hot Springs, South Dakota.

Some of these municipalities are near public parks and campsites but it is not inconceivable that the Blue Sky squad might find itself sequestered on the grounds of a hospitable church or high school.

In any case, accommodations are likely to be less rugged than they were last October in biennial World Solar Challenge in Australia, where the Horizon finished an honourable 12th in a field of 27 in the Challenger Class. (One of the more memorable camping sites in the Outback needed to be cleared of cowpies.)

Most of the technical adjustments the Blue Sky people have made to Horizon over past two weeks are intended to meet the American Solar Challenge safety regulations, which differ from those that prevailed in Australia.

Strange to say, attaching the body of the car (principally the design of Blue Sky alumnus Neil Wu) to the chassis at the World Solar Challenge was simply a matter of applying a high grade of tape (not duct tape, the participants insist, with much laughter). This simple but effective method had the added beneficial effect of sealing the seam completely from outside air.

The American Solar Challenge requires top and bottom to be attached by buckled fasteners. Rollbar dimensions in the cockpit are also different.

Regulations in the 63-page rulebook are many and detailed.

“Solar cars must be equipped with a horn that can be heard at a sound power level between 75 and 102 dBA at a distance of 15 metres in front of the solar car” is one of the simpler examples.

Cellphones are allowed but must be hands-free. Communication with drivers is frequent and necessary. Solar cars are built for efficiency on uninterrupted flat terrain, not the unpredictable conditions that prevail on country roads in Ohio.

“Nobody takes roadkill in account when designing a solar car,” Zhe Gong, Gu’s predecessor as Blue Sky managing director and now a member of the safety oversight group, notes outside the workshop. “They just send a vehicle ahead to clean up.”

Indeed, the team in the lead endures a disproportionate burden of this unenviable duty.

The American Solar Challenge will differ from the Australian experience in presenting more hills and dales to negotiate with maximum efficiency. Student drivers (there are two for Blue Sky) must take care to finesse the accelerator. “Flooring it” carries the risk of stalling.

The “rayce” unfolds over eight days and 1,975 miles (the American Solar Challenge speaks in miles rather than kilometres). Performance is based on the elapsed time of consecutive daytime runs.

“That would be pretty funny, if a solar car race went through the night,” Gu comments.

Forward motion is derived from the sun but a battery is necessary to buffer power during cloudy periods. Even five or ten seconds of cloud cover would otherwise bring the Horizon to a standstill. Teams are allowed to recharge their batteries through solar exposure in the evenings from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., when all batteries must be locked away.

American Solar Challenge official police this activity, but a spirit of goodwill prevails. Participants share insights and even parts if competing teams find themselves in difficulty.

“I think this kind of experience is fantastic for all our students,” Professor Jun Nogami, chair of the department of materials science and engineering, who dropped by on this busy morning to convey his best wishes.

“It’s hand-on learning, it’s working in a team, and it’s working to a real deadline. It offers something completely different from what you learn in the classroom.”

While the point of every race is to win, the unspoken objective of the Blue Sky team is to finish high in the middle of the pack. Unlike the Challenger Class of the World Solar Challenge, the American Solar Challenge permits three-wheeled cars, which have a natural advantage.

The odds of a Blue Sky victory might be long with so many three-wheelers in the field, but winning in this case – pace Henry Russell Sanders and Vince Lombardi – is not the only thing.

“They have a 100-percent chance of learning something,” Gong says of the Blue Sky students. “That is what really counts.”

For information on the American Solar Challenge and updates go to http://americansolarchallenge.org/

Blue Sky Solar Racing

Introducing Viridian: U of T's Blue Sky Solar Racing unveils its latest solar car

U of T's Blue Sky Solar Racing team unveils its newest vehicle

Blue Sky Solar Racing celebrates 20th anniversary

Bronze medal finish for U of T’s Blue Sky Solar Racing team at the American Solar Challenge 2016

Read more about the Blue Sky Solar Racing team

Blue Sky Solar Racing at the ������Ƶ

Blue Sky Solar Racing at the ��Ƶ