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Leonardo Times JUNE 2014F
orze was founded in 2007 by a small group of students from the TU Delft with a dream: the dream to combine mo-torsports with green technology and to reach the same speed and intensity that is found in current races, but in a way that fits the future.THE POWER OF HYDROGEN
Hydrogen fuel cell technology is a good way to make this possible. By using hydro-gen from the tank and oxyhydro-gen from the air, electricity can be generated with only water as a side product.
After entering the fuel cell system, the hy-drogen molecule splits into a proton and an electron. An electrolyte allows the pro-ton to pass, but the electron is forced to take a different route, causing a current. The proton and electron then react with oxygen on the other side of the electro-lyte and form pure water. Many sensors, pumps and other components are part of the balance of plant, which is needed to operate a fuel cell. In order to operate the system as efficiently as possible, a lot of testing is required, as can be seen in Figure 1.
In this way, the fuel cell can produce continuous power as long as hydrogen is supplied. However, in the highly dy-namic environment of a race, continuous power is not what is required. Therefore, a buffer of ultra-capacitors is added to the system between the hydrogen fuel cell and the electric motors. This buffer allows regenerative braking and the generation of high bursts of power, used for accel-eration. The energy buffer consists of 156 ultra-capacitors of 2300F each. The size of this buffer is roughly 800kJ, which is enough to boost the power to 190kW for approximately eight seconds.
HISTORY OF FORZE
Forze is one of the few teams in the world to design, build and race hydrogen elec-tric race-cars. Currently, about seventy students play an active role in the team. The team is very multi-disciplinary with students from almost every faculty at the TU Delft. In 2007, the team started to build their first hydrogen-powered go-kart to compete in the Formula Zero competi-tion. Forze won the world’s first hydrogen fuel cell powered race, called the Formula Zero World Championship, in 2008 with
the Forze I. After this success, Forze con-tinued building go-karts for another two years, wining many more prizes. The last go-kart, the Forze III, managed to beat a conventional kart and showed the power of hydrogen against combustion engine karts. After three years in the Formula Zero competition, the team scaled up to the Formula Student competition, to compete against 130 other student teams from all over the world. After setting the official FIA record on the one-eight mile with the Forze IV of 10.45 seconds, the Forze V was the first hydrogen-powered car to ever compete in an official Formula Student competition.
FORZE VI
With five years of experience in racing with hydrogen fuel cell race-cars, Forze decided to scale up and build a full size track racer on hydrogen. In 2012, Forze started the development of their sixth race-car, the Forze VI. The Forze VI has a powerful fuel cell with a nominal power output of 100kW, which is enough to power thirty households. To generate this power output, 3kg of hydrogen is stored in two tanks at 350bar, which is enough
TU Delft students develop hydrogen race-car
‘Working towards a sustainable, yet exciting future’ is one of the big challenges
in engineering nowadays. A group of students from the TU Delft accepted this
challenge and designed a zero-emission hydrogen powered race-car. Combining
green technology with racing, Forze wants to show the potential of hydrogen as an
alternative fuel. Find out how Forze has been developing hydrogen powered
race-cars since 2007.
TEXT Martin Hartvelt, MSc Student Aerospace Engineering and Chief, Vehicle Dynamics at Forze Delft
FORZE HYDROGEN RACING TEAM DELFT
Student project
RI CH A RD VA N ‘T H O F, RH F O TOGR A FIEJUNE 2014 Leonardo Times
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RI CH A RD V A N ‘T H O F, RH F O TO G R A FI Eto race on full power for about thirty min-utes.
The power that is produced by the fuel cell will be used to actuate the two elec-tric motors, which drive the rear wheels. The electric motors, which are shown in Figure 2, have a maximum torque of 400Nm at 7500rpm and the torque is lin-ear for the whole range of rpms. This re-sults in a fast and agile car, which can ac-celerate from 0-100km/h in less than four seconds and has a top speed of 210km/h. The advantage of having electric mo-tors is that the momo-tors can be controlled separately, which makes it possible to use torque vectoring. This smart diff erential uses multiple inputs from an IMU and two antennas in the car.
APPLICATION OF AEROSPACE KNOWLEDGE
With over thirty BSc and MSc Aerospace engineering students in the team, Forze has a lot of systems in the car for which knowledge from Aerospace Engineering is put into practice. Applying the theoreti-cal knowledge in the design of a hydro-gen race-car gives the students a lot of practical knowledge and experience. This is very valuable to become a more profes-sional and better engineer.
A great example for the application of aerospace knowledge in the design of the Forze VI is the Aerodynamics department. Students in this department learn to work with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software, which is based on mathematical equations learned in the Bachelor. With
the use of CFD software, the design of the bodywork can be iterated to create the best aerodynamic shape for the car. When racing with a velocity of over 200km/u, Aerodynamics becomes very critical for the performance of the car. When the fi -nal exter-nal shape is determined, a scale model of the car will be put in the low turbulence wind tunnel at the TU Delft, to validate the simulations and to get more insight in the fl ow around the car. Additionally, the radiators for the cooling circuit will be tested in the wind tunnel to validate whether they provide enough cooling in the car.
Apart from the aerodynamic behaviour of the car, the mass of the car also has a big infl uence on the performance of the car, especially for the acceleration. In or-der to get the car as lightweight as pos-sible, aerospace students work on diff er-ent systems to apply their knowledge to save weight in the design. One example of this lightweight engineering is the use of composites in the car. The bodywork is completely made of carbon and glass fi ber composites. Laminating the body-work will give the students some hands-on experience, as can be seen in Figure 3. On top of that, a lot of structural compo-nents in the car are made of Aluminium 7075-T6, which is a common material in aerospace applications due to its weight material properties. These light-weight materials are used in the design of the suspension, as can be seen in Figure 4. FUTURE PLANS
In the coming months, Forze will be
test-ing a on the runway of the former airport of Valkenburg near Leiden, and on the circuit of Zandvoort. If the car proves to be reliable enough, Forze will be ready to show the power of the Forze VI to the world. The main goal of the Forze VI is to beat the lap record at the famous German circuit Nürburgring Nordschleife. This is a very challenging circuit with over a hun-dred corners in a twenty-kilometer track. The current record is set by a Nissan X-Trail FCV with a time of 11:58 in 2008.
Next to setting the lap record on the Nür-burgring, Forze will be present on a lot of other events to maximize the exposure of hydrogen racing. Racing against combus-tion-powered race-cars has always been one of the ambitions of Forze. Therefore, Forze wants to compete in the Caterham Cup: a race-competition in the BeNeLux for combustion powered Lotus Super Sev-en race-cars. Apart from all the dynamic events, every year Forze is participating in about thirty static events like fairs or open days.
If the team can continue making the big steps that were made over the past few years, it might just be possible to start dreaming about a formula one car racing on hydrogen.
GETTING INVOLVED
Are you interested to get involved or sup-port the development of hydrogen elec-tric race-cars? Or do you want to have more information about the project? Please send an email to bestuur@forze-delft.nl or visit our website: www.forze-delft.nl
Figure 1. Testing the fuel cell system with the balance of plant. Figure 2. The gearbox of the Forze 06.
Figure 3. Laminating the bodywork of the Forze 06 Figure 4. The suspension of the Forze 06.
