Dan Bohachick / BPS inspector, race strategy

If you organize a 1-on-1 with this person, then fill in the timeslot and your name in the table below.

Question 1: Pitfalls for strategy and off-network considerations

• Time constraints? Answers this with an explanation that route understanding is most important

  • Route book given (known), breakdown into elevations, road conditions, awareness of lanes (tight passing?), where cities/towns are

  • consider time limit, research routes and investigate likely areas of trouble, perhaps consideration of likely traffic constraints wherever they occur

• City segments? How to handle this?

  • Not a lot of time spent in cities/towns - past had East Coast routes so this problem was there - however in this case, try to get out of towns/cities and their traffic when you can

  • Consider when traffic lights may shift their logic if possible - ie., timing lights? Perhaps just check history of traffic on route roads in Maps depending on time of day - could we build this in

  • Would we be able to speed up to avoid these?

  • Assume some lost sunlight to shade in cities/towns?

  • Annotate route conditions by having the lead vehicle go ahead of time to check for road hazards and constructions and keep it on routebook

  • Some teams have tried to time lights (ahead of time), the best is to keep momentum - very hard to to do this, especially as city traffic networks usually change as the day goes on to handle expected conditions

  • Account and try to calculate the impacts of city segments, don’t be surprised

  • Best to have a very good idea of what the car is capable (extensive testing) - don’t force it beyond its capabilities, drivers will often get a feel for this as they draw – build Driver profiles seems to be an idea brought up by Menon in his presentation, and now again by Dan

    • Do not neglect how training drivers and having them be comfortable with the solar car is very important

Question 2: How to track time for average speed?

??? idk if the above question should be here or combined imma move on

Question 3: What considerations do we need for car dynamics beyond aero drag and rolling resistance?

• Pick a route, run it multiple times through different scenarios - without array, with array, different drivers

  • Vary route after you get a good feel of one type of terrain(s); try other ones

  • Aerodynamic drag for a given speed is important info

  • Attempt to identify impacts of different weather conditions (winds) - crosswinds etc on aero drag

    • Teams can get penalized for driving fast through strong winds

    • Good to set up telemetry to see these impacts in real time

  • Dan’s team would try to run the same circuit with different gaps, speeds, etc to test the motor’s efficiency and other tradeoffs in a constant road environment

  • Consider the most efficient speed - not always the best speed at the same time, it may be too low to be competitive for instance

  • Consider modelling individual driver style and driving energy draw profiles

    • Some are more capable with steering, braking control, etc.

• Understand what your array can produce in varying weather conditions

  • Getting current into battery can also have problems - ex he gives is that battery may have a hard time getting energy from solar at 90% since it’s more difficult to charge then

• As we are a cruiser class/MOV, our weight is very important

  • The array will be adding energy, however likely will never get an energy in = energy out as the Challengers do

  • Elevations and motor torque profile are very important

  • You may have power, but pushing speeds that you can’t maintain is hard

  • Consider penalty of charging - hard to model, but suboptimal situations will always occur

    • There is a strategic value and you need to be able to take in this kind of charge effectively without losing back

  • The most important part though is how the battery affects how you tackle terrain and elevations with your heavy weight and extra passengers

• Better to have the chase car to act as a HQ for strategy than the solar car, have a very good real time sync 👀

  • Not mentioned, but this seems to be a call out for very good and reliable networking/telemetry

• Dan has heard of teams using MathWorks (MATLAB) to do simulations and vehicle modelling

• Clearly the takeaway through this Q&A is test test test!!!

Some good resources:

University subscriptions to IEEE, SAE - faculty have written papers on train/plane/car optimizations? Algorithms and approximations for different types of model

Question 4: Weather setup?

Did not get here 😞

Q&A section for Micah

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