UoT Blue Sky - Information Learning

Owned by Aden Chu
Aug 25, 2024
4 min read

I went to UoT Blue Sky and talked to them about their car/doing some information sharing in general. Here’s what I got from that

Operations

  • UoT is not very supportive with design teams compared to Waterloo, for liability reasons. Funding is now kinda scarce. Not planning for BWSC 2025 anymore. Their plans are FSGP 2025, ASC 2026, BWSC 2027.

  • Mostly 3rd/4th year PEY students.

  • Student Levies largest area of funding. Student government initiates elections and ask student bodies to contribute some funds, so kinda similar to what we do with WEEF funds in tuition in a way.

  • Most capital from school/sponsors as expected

  • Notion for documentation

  • Teams split LV and HV and Software/Firmware in Elec

  • Team leads asked to ideally have them stay in the area for coop/PEY to keep retention for 2 year design cycles

  • Machining sometimes sponsored

  • 50% of budget spent on operations(Going to BWSC is expensive, 20k for ocean freight two ways is “cheapest” scenario, not including the tariff/shipping situation.

Aero/Chassis

  • I didn’t ask that much about Aero, since I don’t know much about Aero to begin with.

  • Carbon Fiber sponsored, also have a long time mold making partner, machining sometimes sponsored

  • Gen 11 was mostly a focus on upgrading from previous generation

  • Vehicle was originally for ASC 2022 not WSC, so due to reg changes they had to modify some things(Roll Cage made out of carbon fiber saved 3-4kg)

  • Vinyl wrapped could have improvements

  • Considering having Kevlar just at the edges for their aeroshell in layup, so “less stiff on the shell”

  • Top roof canopy took 3-4 months to rebuild since they were having some issues with Flex

Solar/Motor/Hardware

  • Maxeon Sunpower cells like we do(Mono Silicon). M2096D like us, no surprises. Mitsuba controller, thinking of switching to the Tritiums

  • They are motor limited more than battery/solar limited. Solar drawed on average 750-800w, peak 1000W at BWSC

  • They’re trying to do custom MPPTs like we are, currently using RaceMax Maximiser(1.2K USD a piece apparently)

  • Random fun fact, Nomura is an engineering technician, not an engineering. He’s good for getting maintenance/repair info but not detailed characterisation info

  • Telemetry isn’t anything too special. They have radio antenna with a RF transparent canopy with control board.

  • PCS is Vicor DCM ,no surprises there. They asked us about Flyback efficiency

  • They want to improve harnessing in general

  • Toradex module instead of STM32 because they wanted to use embedded linux, and allowed to use Python/Multiprocessing

  • Big board in red casing that me/Aryan/Forest/Evan saw at motor testing, that’s their new “PD board”. All LV + Isolated HV(so BMS Carrier, MCI, PD all merged as one board effectively).

  • Driver dashboard/Steering is really nice. We should do something like that. No need for external steering stalk, just buttons/switches on steering wheel itself connecting via SPI to dashboard controls

  • BMS generally pretty similar to ours(Each module to AFE, LTC6811/04, isoSPI daisy chaining)

  • Telemetry tracks Battery Voltages, SOC, Temps, BMS Faults) and sends back to chase cars.

 

Battery/Elec Integration/Battery Box

  • Gen 11(current) uses 5 modules of 6S14P, so 30S14P. Molicel M35A 18650 cells

  • They learnt from our motor testing that at lower motor voltages, thermal efficiency sucks and has low torque output, so they want to increase to 34S(downgrade to 8P probably)

  • Max discharge current at WSC was like 10A? So they didn’t stress battery that much, they got lucky with cooling

  • Battery Box in Front of Car for CG purposes(also WSC 20G restraining limit).

  • Used Ansys Icepak for thermal simulation, but heat map was very inconclusive/bad so they decided to just run no cooling, got lucky that this was fine. Wasn’t worth power draw

  • Vibration pads on battery box to reduce vibration issues

  • Most WSC teams also ran passive, argueably the effects were not beneficial.

  • Discharge Testing is done separately from Module Assembly since they just take a 2S2P and test on that, then extrapolate from there(E-Load, Scripting, CC discharge, measure the usual items)

  • Come to me for some of their battery box photos

  • M12 for cable connections(CAN, SPI etc). Very robust, they wanted to try RJ45 but learnt the hard way it doesn’t handle vibrations well….

  • Timeline : They want to get cells by the end of the year, and they allocate 1-2 months for characterisation/battery testing before and after assembly

  • For spot welding, they didn’t have exact numbers because it simply depends on too many factors so they did a sweep test to see what was the best energy for them.

  • They have a new load tester(IT8514C), 120v/240A/1500W is kinda chonk

Mechanical

  • Their steering stuff goes underneath their body(idk how to explain, I have photos so feel free to ask me). RSU looks standard?(idk not a mechie so I didn’t ask much about it).

 

I also did get a sneak peek of one of their CFDs for their next Gen 12 car, but for confidentiality/respect reasons I’m not gonna elaborate/talk about it, and they also requested me not to.y/respect reasons I’m not gonna elaborate/talk about it, and they also requested me not to.