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Fall 2023 Onboard - timeline

To get everyone started on the battery box team, it would be good to go through the basics of designing a simple battery pack. This exercise will help you understand what you are contributing to this term!

You’ll start by reading up on some of the battery pack details and manufacturing methods, and then move to design a simple pack to understand how to put everything together and then provide a recommendation for a battery pack for a car similar to MSXV.

This is the exact same process that we go through when starting to design a new pack for the car (or any battery pack for that matter) - so this is all the required knowledge for building battery packs.

This project can be completed largely offline in your own time, but there will be discussions during check-ins and feel free to ask questions on Slack at other times! There is quite a bit of reading in this intro and you’ll come across a lot of words you might not know. But fear not! As an engineer, you’ll 100% be in this situation basically always. Although difficult, you’ll probably learn the most in these situations too! So, don’t be discouraged, search up words you don’t know, and if all else fails skip sections and you’ll likely come back to it later with the information needed to understand it!

  • Google is your friend and so is this Confluence, search up what term/system/whatever you are confused about on either one and you will find your answer 99.9% of the time

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Onboarding Project

Step 1

Read through these PDFs about designing and building a battery pack. These compile a ton of information - don’t be scared to read them, but be sure to spend the time to understand them. If you have any questions, then message the #mech-battery-box channel on slack and someone will get back to you!

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What do you recommend for the number of cells in series and parallel, and why did you choose those numbers - we’re looking for an answer in the form of XPYS, where X is the number of cells in parallel and Y is the number of cells in series, along with a justification.

Step 3

Draw a diagram sketch of the cells, how they are connected together, and where the main battery terminals are for the battery configuration calculated for Step 2.cell plate holders (what will hold the batteries in place to make the connections, see below for an example) you would 3D model for your answer, a simple design will work. This will help you on the working session on the 16th when we design cell plate holders together on SOLIDWORKS (smile)

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We will be holding a tutorial session on Sept. 16th @ 1:30PM to work through Steps 2 & 3 but we encourage everyone to try on their own first. You will need to answer question 4 on your own so give it your best shot and don’t be scared to reach out for help!

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Submit your answer to Donna Kim , Shem Kim or Nicole Choe through Slack and then we can discuss some more in detail about your answer. We’ll make sure that you understand what you will be contributing to this term!

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Extra Info

Tip

How does the Solar Work?

The solar panels on the Midnight Sun Vehicles provide power directly into the High Voltage system, which powers the motors - it's another power source for the car and will lighten the load on the batteries.

https://batteryuniversity.com/articles

And read “Inside 18650 Cells”: https://www.electricbike.com/inside-18650-cell/

Then read these for some more in-depth background for battery packs:

View file
namePack Building ASC 2015-Solar-Car-Conference-Battery-Electrical.pdf

View file
namePack Building ASC 190202_How-to-Build-a-Pack.pdf