Rennteam Stuttgart Formula Student Project

About the Team

Rennteam Stuttgart is University of Stuttgart's Formula Student Combustion team. Formula Student is an international design competition for students in which teams from around the world construct a single-seated formula vehicle and produce a ready-to-drive prototype, assuming a fictitious design assignment.

In addition to the technical development of the vehicle, which has to prove itself in various disciplines, the teams have the task of designing a feasible business plan and a marketing concept for a small series production for the vehicle they have developed and presented to a jury consisting of experts from the automobile industry. and supplier industry as well as motorsport.

Each team can achieve a maximum of 1000 points in three static and five dynamic disciplines. The overall victory is won by the team with the best overall package of construction, racing performance, financial planning and marketing strategy.

Last but not least, participating in the Formula Student competitions enriches the learning content of the university education with exciting practical experience in the areas of vehicle development and assembly, product and project management as well as strategic management and guides the students step by step through the interdisciplinary way of working in the industry approach.

Our Circuit Boards

This year we are designing a Power Distribution Module (PDM) and a mandatory Brake System Plausibility Device (BSPD). Due to the nature of motorsports, we have lot of design constraints, such as size, robustness against vibration and heat, and of course cost. We design our circuits using CircuitMaker, the community edition of Altium Designer. These designs are available to the public through CircuitMaker community vault.

Power Distribution Module

Racing cars have many electrical sensors and actuators that have to be controlled and supplied with power. For example cooling fans, pumps, active aerodynamics servos, ignition plugs and braking lights consume lots of energy, which has to supplied from the battery. In order to protect the components and the wiring harness, the currents have to be limited and switched when needed. Traditionally this is done using fuses and relays, but they have many disadvantages, such weight and inability to control the current consumption. The solid-state power distribution module with smart high-side drivers can switch the channels off in case of overheating or other faults, while constantly monitoring the current consumption of the components, allowing better data acquisition, easier fault detection and more precise adjustment of the battery capacity.

The circuit consists of ST high-side switches and an ARM Cortex-M4 based microcontroller, as well as a Würth buck converter and a CAN transciever to transmit the measurement results to the data logger. It is approximately 15x10 cm of size and uses an automotive-grade sealed connector. The enclosure will also be built in-house.

Brake System Plausibility Device

BSPD is a circuit that has to be included into the vehicle according to regulation. It compares the brake pressure and the throttle valve position to identify a faulty condition, where the throttle is stuck open and the driver is braking hard. In case of such an inplausibility, the circuits switches the shutdown circuit, which cuts the power to ignition and the fuel pump after 500 ms. Furthermore according to regulation, this functionality has to be realized without a programmable circuit, i.e. only linear and logic integrated circuits are employed in the design.

Conclusion

Since we are a non-profit student organisation, we are dependent on our supporters and sponsors to achieve our goals. PCBway is well-known to support many student projects like ours. Furthermore, the short lead times and reasonable prices means that PCBway is a perfect match for our needs. With the support of PCBway, we aim to protect our 1st place in the world-ranking by building an even more advanced racing vehicle than our predecessors.

Please visit our website and follow us in social media (Facebook, Instagram) for more information.