Departments overview
Welcome to our department page! Here, you'll discover a comprehensive overview of the specialized departments that form the backbone of our team. Each department boasts expertise in a specific aspect of the car, diligently working with their dedicated toolkit to bring innovation and excellence to our project. Explore further to learn about the pivotal roles these departments play in shaping our competitive edge and advancing our collective pursuit of automotive excellence.
The chassis department designs the monocoque of the car, which serves as the framework supporting all components of the vehicle. The monocoque is constructed from carbon and aluminium core. These materials are lightweight yet rigid materials. The chassis department is tasked with the structural design of the monocoque in order to make it as light as possible while adhering to the Formula Student regulations and ensuring it can cope with all the forces of a race car. Furthermore, the chassis department is responsible for the firewall, mountings, the steering system, and roll-over protection.
Chassis
Skills and Software
CAD Designing - Compositie simulation/analysis - Carbon fibre production
Vehicle dynamics
Vehicle dynamics entails the study of vehicle motion and behaviour in response to inputs such as steering, throttle, braking and road conditions. The department is responsible for the suspension and tires of the car, tasked to optimize the speed the car has in its potential. Optimizing is done by running simulations and extensive vehicle testing. Furthermore, the department designs extremely important components such as the co-developed tires and the anti-roll system, all aimed at having as much grip as possible on the track.
Skills and Software
Matlab - Simulink - Altair
The drivetrain department is responsible for designing and developing and optimizing the drivetrain system, consisting of all components transferring power from the engine to the wheels. This includes motors, uprights, final drive and brake and cooling systems. Additionally, the department optimizes the transmission to improve overall driving efficiency.
Drivetrain
Skills and Software
FEM - CAD Design
Powertrain
The powertrain department oversees the motor controller (inverter), controlling the operation of each of the four electric motors. It regulates electrical energy supply based on throttle, braking and vehicle speed inputs by adjusting the voltage, current and frequency to optimize motor performance and efficiency. The design of the motor controller is an extensive but exciting long-term project, heavily contributing the success of our car.
Skills and Software
Schematic and PCB design - Powertrains control - Low-level C-code - FPGA programming - Simulink
The accumulator department designs the vehicle’s high-voltage energy storage system, consisting of battery packs which contain energy to power the motors. The department is responsible for optimizing battery performance by reducing the size and weight of the accumulator, while maintaining safety and reliability and adhering to the Formula Student rules. Optimization is done by both optimizing the electrical design and the mechanical design.
Accumulator
Skills and Software
CAD Design - FEM - Mechanical design
Electronics and software
The electronics and software department is responsible for all low-voltage powered components within the car. This includes sensors used for data acquisition and telemetry. Furthermore, the department ensures all PCB are designed according to the required specifications and designs the wiring harness, serving as the backbone of the car by running power to all low voltage electrical systems. Examples of our designed PCB’s include the battery management system and internal DC/DC converters.
Skills and Software
PCB Design with Altium
Aerodynamics is a crucial aspect of the vehicle design, focusing on optimizing airflow around the car to improve performance, handling, and efficiency. The aerodynamics department performs extensive flow computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to produce as much downforce as possible without sacrificing efficiency. Furthermore, the department optimizes the mechanical design of the aerodynamic package, reducing weight while maintaining rule compliant stiffnesses of the package.
Aerodynamics
Skills and Software
CAD Design - CFD Simulations
Control
Control focuses on maximizing the car’s performance through control systems like traction control and torque vectoring. The department designs, rigorously tests, and optimizes these systems through parameter tuning and enhancing the precision of data acquisition. This includes developing a vehicle state estimator utilizing a Kalman filter. Additionally, the control department oversees motion planning for autonomous driving.
Skills and Software
Simulink - Matlab
Autonomous systems focuses on replacing the human in the car by introducing a full driverless car. The department has replaced human vision, brain and handling by the perception pipeline, depth perception algorithms, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), motion planning and actuators to control the steering wheel and brake and accelerator pedal.
Autonomous Systems
Skills and Software
Simulink - C++
Operations & PR
The Operations & PR department is responsible for marketing, design, public relations, social media and team events, both within the team as public events. Designs include team merchandise, promotional flyers, brochures, website design and a lot more to communicate the team efforts to the outside world. Additionally, the department is in charge of photography and videography used for promotional content on social media, and organizes the partner event, design presentation and roll-out of the newly designed car.
Skills and Software
Adobe Creative Suite - Creativity - Organization and Communication skills
Cost & Manufacturing
Manufacturing process are a vital part of building a race car. Knowledge on these processes and the costs associated with the production of a prototype vehicle are evaluated during the cost and manufacturing events at the races. The department presents the latest processes and reasoning for the choices made to judges. Processes include trade offs between content and cost, make or buy decisions and differences between prototype and mass production. Furthermore, the cost department prepares engineering and manufacturing bill of materials (BOMs), where the department creates an overview of the part of the car.
Skills and Software
Presentation skills - Attention to detail
Business
@FSG23 Winterman
The business department is concerned with developing a comprehensive business model, which is presented during the business event at the competitions. The model should relate to the team and offer the car as a product or sell a service based on it, providing a business opportunity creating a monetary profit.
Skills and Software
Presentation skills - Creativity - Thoroughness
External relations
The acquisition and external relations department plays a critical in building partnerships by identifying potential partners, reaching out to companies and organizations to secure resources needed to develop the innovative race car that we make every year. This involves creating sponsorship proposal and conducting meetings with potential partners. Additionally, the department engages in network activities such as fair visits, industry events and trade shows identify and explore new partnerships for the team.
