FORMUL A STUDENT ELECTRIC TECHNICAL HIGHLIGHTS

Electronic Systems
for a Formula Student Racing Car

The electric racing car Eld of the Norwegian Formula Student APPROACH

team Revolve NTNU features 66 in-house developed circuit boards

Revolve NTNU is an independent student
and more than 300 sensors. In the span of a single year the team organisation at the Norwegian University
of Science and Technology. The team con-
members designed, produced and thoroughly validated an inter-
sists of 64 members who work voluntarily
connected electronic system. This is because the design choices parallel to full time engineering studies.
The members are from 13 engineering
are rooted in the conviction that a robust, tailor made system will
fields and all years of study. Every year a
be able to outperform industrial solutions. new team of students designs and builds

AUTHORS

Lars Henrik Bolstad Amund Fjøsne Martin Haukali Dinosshan Thiagarajah

is part of the electronics
department, responsible for the
VCU, and development and man-
agement of embedded systems at
Revolve NTNU Team 2017 of
the Norwegian University
of Science and Technology
in Trondheim (Norway).
is Group Leader for the electronics
department, responsible for
the safety systems and overall
electronics coordination at
Revolve NTNU Team 2017 of
the Norwegian University
of Science and Technology
in Trondheim (Norway).
is part of the power systems
department, responsible for the
in-house inverter development
at Revolve NTNU Team 2017
of the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology
in Trondheim (Norway).
is part of the electronics
department, responsible for
the dashboard and data acquisition
unit at Revolve NTNU Team 2017
of the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology
in Trondheim (Norway).

50

a new racing car from scratch. In a year
the team completes a full product develop-
ment process in order to produce a capable
race car to compete in the international
engineering competition Formula Student.
At project start the leader group maps
out overall plans, focus areas, needed
competence, organisational structure and
budgets, in addition to recruiting highly
motivated students. The design process
starts with problem identification and
concept development of all systems,
before proceeding to simulation and
design. When all designs are finished pro-
duction and assembly starts. Eight months
into the project testing and continuous
improvement to prepare for the competi-
tion commences. The project is finalised
in the summer on competitions in Europe.
Revolve NTNU’s main electronics
objectives for the 2017 season were
increased reliability and maintainability,
extensive in-house development and
improved functionality compared to
preceding systems. The 2017 electric
car Eld features 66 in-house developed
circuit boards and more than 300 sen-
November 2017 Formula Student Germany
© FSG | Schulz
sors. The key electronic systems are the
Accumulator Management System (AMS),
Vehicle Control Unit (VCU), inverters and
data acquisition system. These systems
are all controlled by the same type of
microprocessing unit to enable develop-
ment and maintenance of a common soft- soft
ware framework.
Software for these systems is written in
the C programming language. The real-
time operating system FreeRTOS makes it
possible to schedule and manage multiple
tasks easily. For efficient code develop-
ment and effective collabora-
tion, the version control
software Git is used.
The distribution
of the elec-
tronic sys-
tems
throughout the car, leads to easier imple-
mentation through reduced complexity
and an overall modular design. This
simplifies the testing and debugging
process of the individual systems.
The AMS is a great example of a fully
distributed system.
ACCUMULATOR MANAGEMENT
Because the accumulator consists of 280
Lithium polymer (LiPo) batteries which
demand strict management of both volt-
ages and temperatures, a system was
needed that is capable of monitoring
these parameters with great accuracy
and at a high frequency. This is accom-
plished with the fully in-house devel-
oped AMS, FIGURE 1, which is configured
as a distributed system consisting of
twelve monitoring boards connected to
the master controller through a daisy
chain, FIGURE 2. Each monitoring board
is connected to two battery modules
which each are composed of twelve pairs
of cells connected in series. This allows
measurements that cover 100 % of both
cell temperatures and voltages. The AMS
is also responsible for monitoring other
aspects of the accumulator such as the
power delivered from the accumulator
and the state-of-charge (SOC). The AMS
master controller uses the ATSAME70N21
FIGURE 1 The accumulator management
system master controller is responsible for
monitoring the condition of the accumulator
system (© Revolve NTNU)
51
FORMUL A STUDENT ELECTRIC TECHNICAL HIGHLIGHTS
microprocessor from Atmel for retrieving
all measurements, calculating total volt-
age and power as well as distributing
this information to one of the car’s two
data networks, the CAN buses.
This processor in combination with
an application-specific integrated circuit
(ASIC) designed for battery management
systems enables the team to reach accu-
rate voltage measurements with a devia-
tion of just ± 1.2 mV at a frequency of
10 Hz, and temperature measurements of
± 2 °C at a rate of 1 Hz. The AMS meas-
ures both outgoing and incoming current
through a current transducer with a sam-
ple rate of 2000 Hz, which not only gives
the ability to calculate the power used,
but also enables the team to catch all cur-
rent transients ensuring that the battery
cells are not stressed, ensuring a high
level of safety. In addition, an external
balancing board allows passive cell bal-
ancing, making sure the accumulator is
in the perfect racing condition without
adding any unnecessary weight.
SENSORS
Extensive utilisation of sensorics is a mas-
sive asset in realising the vehicle’s full
potential. If it can be measured, there is
FIGURE 2 Accumulator containing 12 distributed monitoring cards; each circuit
board monitors 12 cell parallells’ voltages and temperatures (© Revolve NTNU)
52
a sensor on it. Dedicated, self-developed
circuits are responsible for most measure-
ments in and on the vehicle. The sensors
dedicated to measuring the dynamic
responses of the vehicles as well as driver
inputs and external vehicle temperatures
are divided amongst three different cir-
cuits; two in the front and one in the rear
of the vehicle. These circuits read differ-
ent kinds of sensors, both analogue and
digital, to enable both thorough off-track
analysis of the vehicle’s behaviour and
condition, as well as the sought-after ful-
filment of fully differential four-wheel
drive, using an in-house developed
Torque Vectoring (TV) algorithm[1].
To summarise the essentials needed for
efficient use of TV, there are several dif-
ferent sensors that should be mentioned.
Starting with the Accelerator Pedal Posi-
tion Sensors (APPS), which simply tell the
vehicle how much torque is requested by
the driver. The amount of torque given to
each motor is then decided by a number
of factors, including the damper positions
(used to estimate the normal force on
each wheel), as well as steering position
and even a brake pedal sensor which ena-
bles differential motor braking using the
Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS)
without the need for mechanical braking.
VEHICLE CONTROL
Control of the vehicle’s movement hap-
pens through the Vehicle Control Unit
(the VCU, acts as the electrical equivalent
to a combustion vehicles ECU), which
is another in-house developed circuit
intended for tying together the vehicle’s
functionality in a way tailored for TV.
The control unit packs a lot of functional-
ity into a relatively small package. By
compiling data from the vehicle’s senso-
rics and the AMS, it performs plausibility
checks to determine whether the vehicle
is in a safe state and if it is possible to
enable KERS and TV. It is also directly
connected to the IMU, an Inertial Naviga-
tion System with Global Positioning Ser-
vice (INS/GPS) which measures every
movement in ten axes, using Kalman
filtering with GPS data to enable sensor
fusion for precise mapping and velocity
estimation. Combining all these meas-
urements enables precise state estimation
allowing for optimal vehicle control.
Regardless of these rigorous functional
preparations, the only way of making
sure the vehicle runs at peak performance
is through training skilled drivers and
adjusting parameters based on real world
observations and driver feedback. Consid-
ering this is an extremely time-consum-
ing endeavour, most of the VCU’s func-
tionality can be adjusted through numeri-
cal parameters. These are easily updated
frequently, even on-track, by using
the vehicle’s wireless telemetry system.
DATA ACQUISITION
The data acquisition system is responsi-
ble for real-time and after-the-fact data
extraction, allowing for monitoring and
analysis of the car. It consists of a data
logger and a telemetry system. The
data logger stores every message that
is sent through the CAN buses, on an
SD-card. The microprocessor offers a
High Speed Multimedia Card Interface
(HSMCI) which supports access to SD-
card memory. The average write speed
of the logger is 2 MB/s, and the data is
formatted in a way that is supported by
the in-house developed data analysis
software Revolve Analyze, FIGURE 3.
The data is extracted by detaching the
storage unit which is located behind
the car’s dashboard. The stored data
acts as a backup in case the telemetry
system fails.
 The telemetry system is responsible for
transferring data between the car and the
base station wirelessly, allowing immedi-
ate access to car data via Revolve Ana-
lyze. This is an essential tool during com-
petitions and very beneficial during test-
ing. A short-range Wi-Fi-based system is
used for testing purposes, while a radio
system - intended for long range commu-
nication in difficult transmission environ-
ments - is implemented for competitions
and longer ranges. As data sent from the
car is extremely valuable the team chose
a modular approach to reduce the chance
of failure. For this reason the data logger
unit is implemented independently from
the telemetry system.
MOTOR CONTROL
A main target for Revolve NTNU Team
2017 was to do extensive in-house devel-
opment. One of these development pro-
jects was the in-house designed two-level
voltage source inverter (VSI) based on [2].
The inverter controls and regulates cur-
rent drawn by the individual motors.
Requested setpoints are derived from
the ECU. Current is regulated via feed-
back from the hall-effect sensors.
The entire inverter is designed and
produced by Revolve NTNU. This applies
both to the hardware and the software.
Hardware-wise, the inverter is a modular-
ised system consisting of three circuit
boards: the power-card, the gate driv-
er-card and the control-card. A modular-
ised system provides benefits in terms
of debugging and testing, providing
an intuitive separation of low-voltage
control electronics and higher voltage
power electronics.
On the power-card, one finds the 900 V
Silicon-Carbide MOSFETs (SiCMOS) used
as power transistors for conversion from
DC to AC. This is a relatively new and
untested technology, not commonly used
in the automotive industry, where Insu-
lated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBT) has
been the preferred technology for quite
some time. The main benefit of using SiC-
MOS is that they provide a severe reduc-
tion in switching losses. This makes it
possible to increase switching frequency,
which leads to more precise motor control
and greatly reduces heat generation.
Using SiCMOS instead of IGBT enables an
increase in switching frequency of up to
525 %. They are in general also lighter
than traditional IGBT modules.
November 2017 Formula Student Germany
FIGURE 3 Dampers position and torque outputs as a function of time in Revolve Analyze (© Revolve NTNU)
The gate driver card is designed to drive
the voltage levels on the gate-terminal of
the SiCMOSs. The gate driver card ampli-
fies Pulse-width modulation signals sent
from the control card to control the switch-
ing on the SiCMOSs to apply the correct
output to the motors in terms of torque and
speed. The gate driver card also features
connectors for current transducers to send
feedback to the control card.
The control card holds all of the con-
trol logic, featuring two ATSAME70N21
MCUs per control card, one for each
inverter. The MCUs holds the software
for the control-loop, error-handling and
sensor reading. Every control card uses
an Altera Max10 Field-Programmable
Gate Array (FPGA) to read the angular
position from the encoders situated on
the car’s motors.The position is then
transferred via SPI to the MCU, which
then calculates the speed of the motors
and applies the correct phase-shifted
current to the motors.
The final inverter system is estimated
to weigh a total of 4.5 kg [2], including
casing and cooling. This is a reduction
of 7 kg compared to the previous design,
which results in a 60 % weight reduction
for the system and a 4 % reduction of
the car’s overall weight. The simulations
show that this could result in an improve-
ment of as much as 10.5 s during the
endurance event.
CONCLUSION
In the span of a single year the members
at Revolve NTNU design, produce and
thoroughly validate an interconnected,
technically advanced electronic system.
This is because the design choices are
rooted in the conviction that a robust, tai-
lor made system will be able to outper-
form industrial solutions. This desire for
reliability and innovation results in car
featuring many modularised systems,
where more than 95 % of all circuits are
fully in-house developed. The hard work
results in a highly complex product, a
proper race car. The car offers innovative
solutions and complex design in order to
optimise traction, aerodynamic proper-
ties, data acquisition, vehicle control and
minimise weight in order to achieve the
best on-track performance.
REFERENCES
[1] Øren, O.: Optimal Direct Yaw Control for
Four Wheel Independent Drive Electric Vehicle.
Trondheim, Norwegian University of Science
and Technology (NTNU), 2017
[2] Tinderholt, S. A.; Bjørkto, A. H.: Design
And Testing of A Race Car Inverter. Trondheim,
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
(NTNU), 2016
THANKS
A special thanks to Simen August Tinderholt for
supporting development of the in-house designed
inverter for 2017. Furthermore the team would like
to extend their thanks to one of the sponsors who
supports them on an annual basis: Arrow Electronics
is donating cash and components but also partici-
pates in an advisory capacity.
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