Lions Racing Team e.V.

Lions Racing Team e.V. - the Formula Student Team of TU Braunschweig

Lions Racing Team is a team of students from TU Braunschweig and other universities in the area, whose mission is to design and manufacture the car for the annual international competitions of Formula Student. Founded in 2000, our team is one of the oldest German Formula Student teams. Since then, 20 cars were built - 10 for then ubiquitous Internal Combustion (IC) class and, since 2012, ten electric vehicles (EV). Starting from 2019 we are working on making our cars autonomous. We strive to develop not only fast, but also reliable racecars, which requires the highest levels of organization, adaptive thinking and team spirit.

Our PCB Designs

Our car for the 2022 competition season set a new internal record of 56 PCBs in 14 different designs inside. As is the case with the most of the electrical systems in our cars, all PCBs are in-house projects, designed with the strict design philosophy. This allows us to tailor our systems for the performance, weight and size requirements of a given car.

AMS

One of our more involved ECU designs, the Accumulator Management System, code-named AMS, implements all the safety and monitoring features, required to reliably operate our 288-LCO-Pouch-Cell 600V Tractive System Accumulator. This PCB has an isolated communication channel with Battery Monitor ICs, spread throughout the accumulator, which measure voltages and temperatures of each cell, as well as its own current and voltage sensors. Data of all these can be read using USB connection either directly to the board or to the external port in the car.

High Voltage Board

Due to rule changes this Season, a new Tractive System Indicator and Safety Discharge PCB, code-named HV Board, had to be designed. The main feature of this year's design, apart from internal logic changes, is a severe reduction in the size of the board, made to fit it inside the new Inverter housing.

Our Word to PCBWay

With all of us having experience with custom PCBs, we know about PCBWay brand and the quality of production associated with it. This year we hope to introduce our first 6-Layer PCBs for ECU, as well as 1-Layer aluminium/copper based PCBs for high power electronics into our designs with the help of the brand.