Design of the Propulsion System for a Formula SAE racing car based on a Brushless Motor

Abstract

Today, an ever-increasing interest in electric propulsion is occurring due to the need of decarbonizing the society in order to avoid a catastrophic climate collapse. To raise awareness on this challenge, Formula SAE, an international university competition in engineering design, has also established an electric propulsion championship. This paper proposes a low budget motor propulsion system for Formula SAE racing cars. The design is based on realistic data available from previous race editions and suitably analyzed for the application at hand. Besides the budget limitation, which constitutes the main design guideline in this work, a set of constraints imposed by the race regulations are considered. Consequently, the performance requirements are defined, and the ensuing propulsion motor design is carried out through a preliminary analytical sizing followed by a finite-element validation and refinement. A good trade-off between cost and performance is achieved in terms of motor design and overall propulsion system architecture.