The Team
Monash Motorsport is a student-run, not-for-profit racing team based out of Monash University near Melbourne, Australia. The team designs, manufactures, and races open-wheel vehicles in the world's largest student motorsport competitions across Australia and Europe.
Founded in 2000, Monash Motorsport initially entered the Formula SAE / Formula Student scene as a competitor in the internal combustion (IC) vehicle category. In 2016, Monash Motorsport expanded their team to include their first electric vehicle (EV). In 2017, Monash Motorsport made their debut in the EV category at Formula SAE-Australasia. This was the first year Monash Motorsport had brought two cars to a competition: M17-C (Combustion) and M17-E (Electric). My time at Monash Motorsport began in 2016 and concluded when I graduated from the university at the end of 2017. In these two years, I grew the foundation of the electric vehicle team and enjoyed the success of taking 1st place overall at Formula SAE Australasia. To learn more about the success of M-17E and my role in developing this vehicle, read on below. |
My Role
Within Monash Motorsport, I became the lead battery systems engineer and the manager of the electric powertrain section for M17-E. Being Monash Motorsport's very first electric vehicle, the M-17E build presented numerous technical challenges which were unprecedented to the team. However, as a group of young talented engineers, we were able to overcome these and put together a car which would ultimately win it's first competition against teams from all over the world.
As the electric powertrain manager, it was my role to plan, organise, and lead the development of M17-E's electric powertrain, whilst controlling the budget and schedule to ensure the product was delivered in line with the broader team strategy. |
As the lead battery systems engineer, I was responsible for the performance and safety of the battery system. The battery system comprises two major sub-systems: the battery itself, which contains many Lithium Ion cells; and the Battery Management System (BMS), which is the electronics and software which control battery performance and safety.
The battery pack was constructed using 120 EIG C020 lithium ion cells connected in series, producing a theoretical peak power of 99.6kW (498V, 200A). The pack had a total energy of 8.76 kWh, just enough to allow the driver full performance over a 22km endurance race. In comparison, this is about 1/10th of the energy in a 2012 Tesla Model S (85 kWh). |
M17-E's BMS monitors the vehicle's battery voltage, current, and temperature to ensure these remain within safe thresholds. Additionally, the BMS provides the capability to cleverly manage battery power, improving range or performance, or a balance of these based on the situation.
An additional feature of the BMS is to calculate and display to the driver the current state-of-charge (SOC) of the battery. Displaying the % SOC is equivalent of a combustion vehicle's fuel gauge. However, unlike fuel, a battery's capacity cannot be physically measured. This results in a complex system which utilises software algorithms to estimate the battery SOC and communicate this to the driver throughout the race. For M17-E's BMS, the computing power was provided by a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 CPU integrated with various digital logic ICs on a Cypress PSoC 5LP. This was placed on a self-developed printed circuit board (PCB) with various hardware components to create M17-E's BMS master control board and achieve the functionality described above. |
The Competition
Monash Motorsport competes in both Formula SAE in Australia and Formula Student across Europe. M17-E made it's debut in December, 2017 at Formula SAE Australasia. This event took place at Calder Park Raceway, which is located near Melbourne, Australia. In this competition the team achieved the following results:
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The M17-E vehicle was then refined and taken to compete in the European Formula Student competitions in June/July 2018. Here, the team achieved the following overall results in the EV category:
With the success of M-17E and the EVs which built upon it's foundation, Monash Motorsport reached an overall World Ranking of 3rd in the EV category. * Rankings provided by fs-world.org/E/222, effective from Dec. 2019 |