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Today’s knowledge share is about the regulations for FSGP (Formula Sun Grand Prix), ASC (American Solar Challenge), and possibly WSC (World Solar Challenge). We haven’t been to that competition in a while, but it has slightly different sets of regulations. However, it’s just really useful to know that all these regulations are completely fair, but they provide the necessities for the minimum product of our solar vehicle. We have to consider them because that will let us attend competition, but there are also other factors to our design that we have to choose and that the regs will not describe. We have to spec our components to be most effective and any communication is not specified in regs. That’s the main usefulness of this knowledge share, and also that we have taken an 80-page document and give you a high-level understanding of what it comes down to. In general, they’re just awesome experiences so it’s fun to talk about and it’s also a good thing to look forward to attend. So our agenda; the regs are broken down into 3 components, which are the regs breakdown, the technical breakdown, and operations. We’ll also talk about scrutineering, which is the main component that we need to prepare for when we’re there during competition week. I’ve linked the ASC regs on that page so when this is uploaded, that’s the version we used for this document. So I’ll go over section 1, the regs breakdown. So what is the purpose of all of this? At the end of the day, we're making a solar car for a variety of reasons, but the competition itself is a way to display our engineering creativity and gain experience in an awesome learning environment, have some friendly competition, and also gain automotive industrial experience because at the end of the day we are driving in these cars, so things like meeting specifications for temperatures and safety. Those are very important and we reflect that in our design, so this competition lets us showcase that. Finally, we’re a solar car team and the innovation in our design is put on display here because we’re all driving EVs that harness energy from the sun and our car particularly is meant to be like a sedan, with four passengers. The regs just basically say that in other words. The regs then go to talk about administration. FSGP is formula sun grand prix. It happens every year and it’s a track-based competition, so every year we meet in a location that’s determined a year in advance, and is provided to all the teams that register. They also tell us the location and every other year, there’s the American solar challenge, which is another event that happens right after FSGP. We’ll talk about this event more later, but it's basically a race across the states, which is pretty cool. The last one was in 2018, and the next one was supposed to be this summer, but it's being pushed to next summer. During these events, there is a lot going on because we have all these teams and then we have to have what the regs call the administration, which is a tent put up for headquarters and there are various officials during the event. There’s the regulations manager keeping track of all the regulations that are being met, and also looking at penalties that need to be given in various situations. The Event Director, also a management-type position, chief inspector in charge of the team that will be inspecting vehicles. Timekeeper. FSGP is a week-long event, and it consists of 3 days of scrutineering, which is equivalent of testing, and then 3 days of racing. Keeping time and schedule is a subdivision of administration. The way the regulations are applied to are scrutineering, qualifiers and the tour, which are 3 stages of ASC coupled with FSGP. Then the regs go into safety, and the safety is not just about the vehicle’s electrical or mechanical safety, but about the equipment required and the people who are driving and near the car. Even after passing scrutineering tests, it’s always good to remember that we’re liable for our vehicle and any failures during the entire event. We’re not good just because we passed the tests in scrutineering. We must always be aware of our vehicle and our design must be primarily focused on safety. At the end of the day, we’re putting ourselves in this, which is a crazy amount of risk if safety is not the primary focus. So what does safe mean? It means we have a road-worthy car, so it can actually drive is on the road in the setup that’s used for ASC with the support vehicles and it passes the minimum regs of competition and of course, it maintains the minimum regs plus the regs we have put for other systems not outlined. So every competition, there will be a safety officer, who must be trained in first aid and CPR, so we elect one during the terms for competition. If you are interested in competition, which you should be, that’s a role that someone has to take. They can’t be a driver or team manager, but it’s a very important role because they’re the point of contact in case of a safety concern. We have a safety kit that must be carried in the support vehicles during the entire competition. It’s especially important because there have been lots of instances where a car breaks down and stops and things like fires can happen. The safety kit includes a first aid kit, safety vests; everyone must be wearing one during competition when the car is moving, PPE for battery handling; if there’s a need to replace cells or modules, we need the equipment for that, we need orange cones with us at all times, warning flags, a fire extinguisher (very important), battery material safety datasheet, a battery spill kit (which can be 40 kg of sand and a shovel to apply it) or another method of battery fire containment, and we also need a container for damaged cells. This is the bare minimum listed in the regs, so we have to show up with this equipment. We don’t need to carry this is the vehicle itself, this is for the support vehicles or at the pit during FSGP. We hear about this competition, and we get an outline of the event a year in advance, and before we can just show up to the event, there’s a lot of paperwork and deadlines to be met. The reason I wanted to bring this up is that we’ve talked to past leads, that have had some sad outcomes because they worked really hard on their car, but they were not allowed to participate because they missed their deadlines for some track fees and forms. In addition, this is actually very important for us as well because we have to include a couple of documents that are technical in nature, so in the initial registration package, we needed to send the PVDR. The PVDR has preliminary information about the electrical systems, batteries, solar cells, the mechanical structure, as well as the battery protection system. There’s another package, the track registration package, which includes the vehicle design report, including a solar report, battery report, protection report, electrical report, and a bunch of mechanical reports. These reports need to be approved in order to compete. We also need to send a team photo, team number (we’ve reserved 24), and a team datasheet, which is a high-level outline of our car, including battery weight and capacity, chassis description, braking architecture, wheel specs, and a list of all the leads. There's a section in the regs that explains the requirements for the technical documentation required. Any of the hardware leads can send you a copy of our PVDR or VDR if you’re interested. These documents are sent to the scrutineers, who are the people that will inspect the vehicles before competition. They will provide feedback to ensure that our design complies with the regulations. For example, they recommended that we increase the number of thermistors in our BMS based on the number of cells in our battery pack. The PVDR includes roll over and driver impact protection, an overview of the electrical report, electrical diagram, preliminary battery approval form, battery specs, testing plans, and timeline, and solar cell approval form. There also needs to be an engineering build review (mainly for mechanical). Before any documents are submitted, they must review the design with an experienced engineer. The VDR is the main document we are required to provide, which will be heavily reviewed. On ASC’s website during this stage, the status of all the documentation of all the teams is shown. Teams that complete their documentation first are allowed to complete scrutineering first, which provides a time advantage during the race. The VDR includes the mech tech report, the electrical system tech report, the battery tech report, the battery protection report, the battery protection tech report, and the solar cell tech report. The 3 stages of ASC are scrutineering, qualifiers, and the tour. For scrutineering, we need to get all green status before moving on the qualifiers, or at least blue status. Green status means approved and ready to go. Blue status means we can race, but there are penalties. Scrutineering is a set of tests during the first 3 days. The priority goes to teams who completed their registration forms and vehicle reports first. For the dynamics scrutineering, the tests need to be repeated with each driver. Next is qualifiers, which is the main component of FSGP. We must pass the qualifiers before racing in the tour. The tour is a cross-country event and we must complete a minimum number of laps in FSGP to be allowed to race. Most of the vehicles are still single-occupant vehicles (SOV), which is the traditional “spaceship“ car design (also called challenger class in WSC). Designed to be light-weight, and much faster than our class, which is a multi-occupant vehicle (MOV). Vehicles in this class are designed to be practical consumer vehicles that carry multiple passengers (also called cruiser class in WSC). Not as many teams make MOVs, but the number is growing. There’s also a class called grandfathered, which means the car competed in the past. These vehicles aren’t ranked but can race for demonstration only. Technical Regulations Power
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