Department
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Research Advisor
Carroll, Douglas R.
Advisor's Department
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Abstract
Solar car racing demands the most efficient components and systems on the highway today. Physical optimization of the layout of the solar array to absorb as much energy from the sun as possible can produce significant gains in the speed of the car. The solar array optimization program developed in this project will accept a user-defined range of sun angles that is representative of the sun angles the array will see during its on-road travels and add up the total power produced for this generic "'day." The power produced by a fl.at solar array of the same plan-view area is also calculated in the same manner as a reference to compare with the tested design. The ratio of the tested design to the reference panel gives an indication of how much power the design would collect in comparison to an ideal fl.at plate. The program also finds another ratio of how much power the array design would collect while aimed at the sun with respect to the flat plate reference array similarly aimed at the sun. Weighting both of the ratios by their importance to gathering the day's energy and adding them together gives a single number which can be used to quantify the ability of the tested design to gather energy, called the goodness quotient.
The program was tested using several test cases to ensure that it was working properly. The first test was to assume a flat solar array on the car that was divided into small pieces. This array design was shown to produce exactly the same output as the reference calculation and yielded a goodness coefficient of unity as expected. The design was successfully tested against a reference panel, several fundamental shapes, as well several different array layouts on the body shape from the University of Missouri - Rolla's 2005 entry into the North American Solar Challenge, Solar Miner 5.
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Document Type
Presentation
Presentation Date
2004-2005
Recommended Citation
Baughman, Andrew, "Optimization of Solar Array Layout for Solar Cars" (2004). Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience Program (OURE). 212.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/oure/212
