Design of a power limiter for an FSAE electric racecar

MIT Motorsports is the Formula SAE team at MIT that has competed in Lincoln, NE since 2013. Last year's racecar performed exceptionally in all dynamic events but was disqualified from the endurance event due to a power violation. In order to prevent a violation in the following year, a power limiter was developed to ensure that the power consumption of the vehicle is reliably under the limit. Since weight and space come at a premium when it comes to an electric racecar, the power limiting approaches were implemented through C code in the car's Vehicle Control Unit. The power limiter makes use of a feed-forward mechanical power limiter combined with an electrical power limiter that makes use of the battery's power consumption with the use of a PI closed-loop controller. Powertrain efficiency calculations were performed to best model the power consumption of the vehicle. Testing became an essential tool used to develop, debug, and validate the power limiter. This year's power limiter will reliably keep the team under the power limit while minimally affecting performance to increase our potential at the next competition.

Name thesis:degree_name

Bachelor

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Melendez, Alvaro J.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Amos G. Winter.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123279

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/123279