CUER

The rules are very, very long and dynamic. They specify all sorts of things, e.g. maximal length of the car, allowable area of solar arrays, minimal visibility of the driver, steering radius, capacity of batteries etc. The rules keep changing slightly, which leads to slightly different designs of the cars every year. However, in the past several races, there seemed to be one winning design concept, which other teams were copying and improving upon. Given limited financial resources (some teams don’t have to worry about money at all) CUER wanted to win by being innovative, so it started developing a solar powered motorbike for WSC 2013.

However, the rules changed dramatically in 2012. Now, the cars have to have 4 wheels in a rectangular arrangement - like a conventional car. At that time, CUER had already built a prototype of a solar powered motorbike so CUER had to start all over again. The consequence is that he whole design/manufacture/test process has to be squeezed in a year or so. They tried to use as much from the concept of a solar motorbike as possible, which lead to a game-changing design that is going to win this year! Usually, the teams design the car to have the best solar performance and then they modify it to have a really good aero. CUER approached it the other way round. They came up with very slim and aerodynamics design (like a rain drop) and then they optimised it for solar performance.

To win, your car needs to travel fast. To travel fast with limited power-supply - solar cells -your car needs to have low air resistance. Air resistance depends on the geometry of the car. Also, at high velocities, the car is punching a hole though the air, so the smaller the hole though the air, the smaller the air resistance. That is why our car is 4.5 m long, only 0.8 m wide and in a shape of a rain drop.  As the solar panels are not a part of the aerodynamic surface - which was the case of our previous car Endeavour, and the banned winning design  -  they can rotate and track the sun without interfering with the aerodynamics of the car, This results in 15-20% increase in solar performance. Our car is using gallium arsenide solar cells, which are the most efficient solar cells (about 40%) available on the market - the same solar cells that are used in the space like ISS.

 Endeavour

I joined CUER at the beginning of Michaels term (October 2012). As the whole project is very complicated and requires incredible funding (we need 500 000 GBP to finish it), there is a team division, like Mechanical, Electronical, Aero, Composites and Bussiness. During the first recruitment session, the leader of the composites team was talking interesting stuff about carbon fibre, so I joined that as it sounded like carbon nano-tubes/space elevator to me. What a disappointment that was couple of weeks later in the term, when I found that laying carbon fibre is basically the same as repairing a glass-fibre boat, which my family used for sailing down the rivers in the Czech Republic.

   Daphne

So far, I have enjoyed being part of the team. I went to National Composite Centre at Bristol for a week to help with manufacturing the carbon-fibre chassis of our car. I have learned how to use CAD (Computer Aided Design - software for engineering drawings). The whole project is incredibly interesting and working on the solar powered car has been really rewarding.

for more information, visit www.cuer.co.uk

short informative video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uMB2Va635A&list=UUdLAEG5j8OM1cb-QiRasYeQ&index=6

Photographs: CUER