RICHARD VAN ‘T HOF, RH FOTOGRAFIE
Student project
FORZE HYDROGEN RACING TEAM DELFT
TU Delft students develop hydrogen race-car
‘Working towards a sustainable, yet exciting future’ is one of the big challenges
in engineering nowadays. A group of students from the TU Delft accepted this
challenge and designed a zero-emission hydrogen powered race-car. Combining
green technology with racing, Forze wants to show the potential of hydrogen as an
alternative fuel. Find out how Forze has been developing hydrogen powered racecars since 2007.
TEXT Martin Hartvelt, MSc Student Aerospace Engineering and Chief, Vehicle Dynamics at Forze Delft
F
orze was founded in 2007 by a small
group of students from the TU Delft
with a dream: the dream to combine motorsports with green technology and to
reach the same speed and intensity that
is found in current races, but in a way that
fits the future.
THE POWER OF HYDROGEN
Hydrogen fuel cell technology is a good
way to make this possible. By using hydrogen from the tank and oxygen from the
air, electricity can be generated with only
water as a side product.
After entering the fuel cell system, the hydrogen molecule splits into a proton and
an electron. An electrolyte allows the proton to pass, but the electron is forced to
take a different route, causing a current.
The proton and electron then react with
oxygen on the other side of the electrolyte and form pure water. Many sensors,
pumps and other components are part
of the balance of plant, which is needed
to operate a fuel cell. In order to operate
the system as efficiently as possible, a lot
of testing is required, as can be seen in
Figure 1.
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In this way, the fuel cell can produce
continuous power as long as hydrogen
is supplied. However, in the highly dynamic environment of a race, continuous
power is not what is required. Therefore, a
buffer of ultra-capacitors is added to the
system between the hydrogen fuel cell
and the electric motors. This buffer allows
regenerative braking and the generation
of high bursts of power, used for acceleration. The energy buffer consists of 156
ultra-capacitors of 2300F each. The size
of this buffer is roughly 800kJ, which is
enough to boost the power to 190kW for
approximately eight seconds.
HISTORY OF FORZE
Forze is one of the few teams in the world
to design, build and race hydrogen electric race-cars. Currently, about seventy
students play an active role in the team.
The team is very multi-disciplinary with
students from almost every faculty at the
TU Delft. In 2007, the team started to build
their first hydrogen-powered go-kart to
compete in the Formula Zero competition. Forze won the world’s first hydrogen
fuel cell powered race, called the Formula
Zero World Championship, in 2008 with
the Forze I. After this success, Forze continued building go-karts for another two
years, wining many more prizes. The last
go-kart, the Forze III, managed to beat a
conventional kart and showed the power
of hydrogen against combustion engine
karts. After three years in the Formula
Zero competition, the team scaled up
to the Formula Student competition, to
compete against 130 other student teams
from all over the world. After setting the
official FIA record on the one-eight mile
with the Forze IV of 10.45 seconds, the
Forze V was the first hydrogen-powered
car to ever compete in an official Formula
Student competition.
FORZE VI
With five years of experience in racing
with hydrogen fuel cell race-cars, Forze
decided to scale up and build a full size
track racer on hydrogen. In 2012, Forze
started the development of their sixth
race-car, the Forze VI. The Forze VI has a
powerful fuel cell with a nominal power
output of 100kW, which is enough to
power thirty households. To generate this
power output, 3kg of hydrogen is stored
in two tanks at 350bar, which is enough
Leonardo Times JUNE 2014
09-Jul-14 11:43:12
RICHARD VAN ‘T HOF, RH FOTOGRAFIE
Figure 1. Testing the fuel cell system with the balance of plant.
Figure 2. The gearbox of the Forze 06.
Figure 3. Laminating the bodywork of the Forze 06
Figure 4. The suspension of the Forze 06.
to race on full power for about thirty minutes.
The power that is produced by the fuel
cell will be used to actuate the two electric motors, which drive the rear wheels.
The electric motors, which are shown
in Figure 2, have a maximum torque of
400Nm at 7500rpm and the torque is linear for the whole range of rpms. This results in a fast and agile car, which can accelerate from 0-100km/h in less than four
seconds and has a top speed of 210km/h.
The advantage of having electric motors is that the motors can be controlled
separately, which makes it possible to use
torque vectoring. This smart differential
uses multiple inputs from an IMU and two
antennas in the car.
APPLICATION OF AEROSPACE
KNOWLEDGE
With over thirty BSc and MSc Aerospace
engineering students in the team, Forze
has a lot of systems in the car for which
knowledge from Aerospace Engineering
is put into practice. Applying the theoretical knowledge in the design of a hydrogen race-car gives the students a lot of
practical knowledge and experience. This
is very valuable to become a more professional and better engineer.
A great example for the application of
aerospace knowledge in the design of the
Forze VI is the Aerodynamics department.
Students in this department learn to work
with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
software, which is based on mathematical
equations learned in the Bachelor. With
the use of CFD software, the design of the
bodywork can be iterated to create the
best aerodynamic shape for the car. When
racing with a velocity of over 200km/u,
Aerodynamics becomes very critical for
the performance of the car. When the final external shape is determined, a scale
model of the car will be put in the low
turbulence wind tunnel at the TU Delft,
to validate the simulations and to get
more insight in the flow around the car.
Additionally, the radiators for the cooling
circuit will be tested in the wind tunnel
to validate whether they provide enough
cooling in the car.
Apart from the aerodynamic behaviour
of the car, the mass of the car also has a
big influence on the performance of the
car, especially for the acceleration. In order to get the car as lightweight as possible, aerospace students work on different systems to apply their knowledge to
save weight in the design. One example
of this lightweight engineering is the use
of composites in the car. The bodywork
is completely made of carbon and glass
fiber composites. Laminating the bodywork will give the students some handson experience, as can be seen in Figure 3.
On top of that, a lot of structural components in the car are made of Aluminium
7075-T6, which is a common material in
aerospace applications due to its lightweight material properties. These lightweight materials are used in the design of
the suspension, as can be seen in Figure 4.
FUTURE PLANS
In the coming months, Forze will be test-
ing a on the runway of the former airport
of Valkenburg near Leiden, and on the
circuit of Zandvoort. If the car proves to
be reliable enough, Forze will be ready
to show the power of the Forze VI to the
world. The main goal of the Forze VI is to
beat the lap record at the famous German
circuit Nürburgring Nordschleife. This is a
very challenging circuit with over a hundred corners in a twenty-kilometer track.
The current record is set by a Nissan X-Trail
FCV with a time of 11:58 in 2008.
Next to setting the lap record on the Nürburgring, Forze will be present on a lot of
other events to maximize the exposure of
hydrogen racing. Racing against combustion-powered race-cars has always been
one of the ambitions of Forze. Therefore,
Forze wants to compete in the Caterham
Cup: a race-competition in the BeNeLux
for combustion powered Lotus Super Seven race-cars. Apart from all the dynamic
events, every year Forze is participating in
about thirty static events like fairs or open
days.
If the team can continue making the big
steps that were made over the past few
years, it might just be possible to start
dreaming about a formula one car racing
on hydrogen.
GETTING INVOLVED
Are you interested to get involved or support the development of hydrogen electric race-cars? Or do you want to have
more information about the project?
Please send an email to bestuur@forzedelft.nl or visit our website: www.forzedelft.nl
JUNE 2014 Leonardo Times
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