Waterloo Hybrid’s car won 3rd place in GM’s Hybrid Design Category and placed 10th out of 24 teams at the Formula Hybrid Competition in Loudon, New Hampshire April 28 through May 1.
It all started back in 2012. Waterloo Hybrid was a brand new team with members who were more family than friends. They took on one of the greatest and the most difficult engineering challenges for students in University. They committed more than just hours of their time; they dedicated their entirety to design, build and compete a hybrid Formula One style race car at one of the most prestigious international competitions in the world. Now, 2 years later, Waterloo Hybrid has done it again.
There have been a lot of changes in Waterloo Hybrid since 2012. Most of those committed members graduated, some left to take on other endeavours and some just became swept with work. Early 2013, the team was questioning the idea of continuing as a design team since there was a lack of information from the previous team, a lack of resources and not enough hands to complete the project on time. But this didn’t stop them. Waterloo Hybrid thrives off commitment and dedication; in essence it is a team that “leads by example”. Without giving up, the new team was comprised of just around 10 students give or take the couple of people who showed up only on meetings. They set their goal to compete in the 2014 SAE Formula Hybrid Competition held in Loudon, New Hampshire on the April 28, 2014.
Starting May of 2013, the mechanical team took to the drawing board. Sven Wehrmann, Jake Kononiuk, Mark Leslie, Daniel Kaufhold and the rest of the mechanical team set out design packages with heavy sets of criteria and constraints. In four months, they were able to design a new chassis and drivetrain, as well as re-design most of the mechanical systems from the previous 2012 car. The electrical team led by Chris Steel dedicated their time in designing the most efficient electrical system. They designed the Battery Management System (BMS), the High Voltage system, the Low Voltage system, and numerous other electrical systems. This is the difference between Waterloo Hybrid and other teams. Waterloo Hybrid needs an equally strong electrical team to be able to build a high performance and efficient hybrid race car.
In September 2013, the team grew in numbers. Many new and curious first-year students signed up in groups to be part of Waterloo Hybrid, but soon realized the time commitment the team required, and most individuals just didn’t have the time to continue. But some stayed on-board and were ready to take on the challenges as they came. This marked the start of the manufacturing stage, where more hands meant faster manufacturing. The team had also hired a new co-op for the fall of 2013, Karan Bir. Karan immediately understood what was at stake and jumped into manufacturing components and designing more parts. The team started the manufacturing process by putting together the jig table first. This is used to weld the chassis together so it doesn’t warp. After that, the steel tubing for the chassis came through from Waterloo Hybrid’s exceptional sponsor, Cartesian. After post-profiling and cutting the tubes into correct lengths, it took two long weeks to weld the whole chassis together. While this was taking place in the mechanical team, the electrical team, including Caleb Amlesom, Alex Bondarenko, Tarjote Chaggar, Stephane Lee, Jerri Li, Michael Thiessen and Sven Wehrmann, were all busy building the critical low voltage system and high voltage system.
Once the chassis was completed and painted, the mechanical team dove into manufacturing the rest of the subsystems. This meant the A-arms (the rods that connect the wheels to the chassis), the steering system, the suspension and the hundreds of spacers and inserts were to be manufactured. Waterloo Hybrid wasn’t the only team working on a project however; the machine shop resources were shared with Formula SAE, BAJA, Rocketry Team and many others. Coming in early and leaving late, the team was able to finish manufacturing most of the subsystem parts by the end of January 2014. The start of the term marked the employment of two new co-ops, Keith Lau and Ronnie Wan, who dedicated endless hours to machine, manufacture and assemble the rest of the car. Most of the members from the previous term were on co-op starting 2014. This led to problems with transportation and coming to the Bay (located in Engineering 5) to work on the car, and the lack of hands once again marked a challenge for the team.It didn’t hold Waterloo Hybrid back, though. With the return of Jake Kononiuk from co-op, he became the acting mechanical lead as Sven left for co-op. With Jake’s leadership and management, and the dedication and commitment of Keith, Ronnie and Rishi, the team was able to have a rolling chassis by March. The competition was slowly easing in on Waterloo Hybrid and the value of time rose significantly.
March was a significant hurdle for the group. The electrical team faced the most serious challenges. With the outage of the Power Supply, the death of two Li-Po batteries, the increasing amount of noise in the system, and the numerous competition rules that were currently being broken by the systems in place, the team could not yet fully assemble the car. This was serious since the competition was merely a month and half away. Sven, the mechanical team lead is almost gifted with knowledge. He had just finished 2B Mechatronics but he had the knowledge of any leading professional in the industry. He committed himself to fixing the issues. Coming in every night during the week, he was redesigning systems and rewiring almost everything. The electrical team, almost entirely on co-op at the time, joined him on weekends. They traveled from Toronto every weekend and made Engineering 5 their second home.
While March tested patience, April tested commitment. In the first weeks, Waterloo Hybrid was on track for completing assembly. By mid-April, with the help of new involved and dedicated team members Ping Cheng Zhang and Krzysztof Kohar, Waterloo Hybrid had a running car. Time was critical; competition was only 2 weeks away. Rigorous testing of the car was needed. By the third week of April, the team had tested the car enough to have a buckled differential mount and a bent A-arm. The week before competition tested commitment. Since the last two weeks of April are between terms in the University of Waterloo, everyone was done co-op and done school. This led to the whole team staying till 5am in the morning every day of the week building spare A-arms (a lengthy process), new differential mounts (built by Ping Zhang), and new firewall. Finally by April 26th 2014, the team was packed and ready for competition. Leaving early the next morning, Waterloo Hybrid had three cars, one trailer and 14 stoked team members awaiting the experience of a lifetime.
Embarking on a lengthy journey to Loudon, New Hampshire, the next week was to test all the hard work the Waterloo Hybrid team had put in. Arriving at competition a day early on the night of Sunday April 27, Waterloo Hybrid was the first team to arrive at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway and wasted no time setting up camp and the trailer. That night, the team met up and discussed how the week was to go, making sure that everything was ready for the big technical inspections that were to occur in the week.
Starting the competition off on early Monday morning, the team registered and set out to one of the dedicated student bays provided by the organizers. Wheeling in the car and all the tools brought by the team, everyone immediately went into going over inspection sheets. As there were still minor problems with the electrical system due to all the changes that took place during the months of March and April, the team was still trying to fix things up at Competition. Looking around, the team was surrounded by equally dedicated and committed students from schools such as Yale, Carnegie Mellon, and Dartmouth College. Later on in the day, the team took the car out for the electrical pre-inspection and was immediately overwhelmed with corrections that had to be taken. This meant that there was still a lot of work to be done. There was no curfew. A night’s sleep only lasted a couple hours for most of the students because the day became so long. The team worked on the car, troubleshooting and rewiring till 3 am before finally calling it a day.
The next day involved the great business presentation which was to be delivered to a group of judges consisting of professionals from companies including Tesla Motors. The presentation was prepared and delivered by Rishi Chatterjee, whose professionalism and sharpness drove the team to 7th place in the presentation event out of 24 teams. While Waterloo Hybrid was focused on fixing all the issues detailed from the pre-inspection, the rest of the day consisted of design presentations, driver meetings, and other compulsory congregations.
Wednesday was the most promising day the team had ever seen. Starting the day early in the morning, the number one objective was to pass the electrical technical inspection. The team was first in line for the inspection, but there were a lot of problems. The inspector marked off small issues that had to be addressed before they could pass the inspection. Rushing back to the bay, the team immediately started fixing every little issue, all of which were located right inside the complicated High Voltage box. This took almost 4 hours of the day, but the team was able to go back in line for the technical inspection. While waiting for their turn, the word got out that only one team had passed the electrical technical inspection so far. If Waterloo Hybrid was to pass the inspection this time, it would be closer to competing on the track than the majority of the other teams. With high hopes, the team rolled the car into the electrical technical inspection.
The inspection lasted 2 hours and by the end of it most of the members on the team had fingers that were starting to hurt from crossing them so hard. After detailed discussions, rigorous inspection and testing, Waterloo Hybrid passed the almighty electrical inspection. They were only the 2nd team of all 24 to pass the electrical inspection. No time could be wasted however, and the team rolled the car to the mechanical technical inspection right away. Time was running out and the team was still hoping to compete in the Autocross event scheduled to end in just minutes. The team flew through mechanical inspection and was onto the next test, the tilt test. This test rotated the car 65 degrees on its side with the driver, Sven Wehrmann, comfortable sitting inside. The team had no trouble passing the tilt test, but unfortunately time wasn’t on their side and the Autocross event had ended.
Thursday was the big day and the last day of competition. Waterloo Hybrid rolled out early and went over to the last test, the rain test. This test was made to ensure that the car was waterproof due to the severely rainy weather. The car was fuelled with 95 Octane racing fuel and the drivers, Sven Wehrmann, Jake Kononiuk and Keith Lau, were ready to hit the track for the final and most important event of the competition: the endurance run. This was a 44-kilometer track, which tested the cars manufacturing quality and the team’s final overall build. Waterloo Hybrid was the 2nd car ready to compete in this event of the 24 teams. The team finished the endurance event with a 4th place title, astonishing even themselves. The rest of the day entailed cleaning up, packing up and attending the Award Ceremony. By the end of the Endurance event, the team was dead tired but not ready to give up just yet.
The Award Ceremony brought surprising results. Waterloo Hybrid was presented with a 3rd Place trophy in GM’s Hybrid Design Category and placed 10th overall out of 24 of the world’s best student engineering teams. The team was thrilled because, even with the upsets, Waterloo Hybrid finished incredibly strong for a team without any competition experience. The accomplishment was especially impressive as all the other teams consisted of many 4th year and Masters students who not only had more knowledge, but could also provide more resources. Waterloo Hybrid consists only of 1st year, 2nd year, 3rd year students and Krzystof. It still came out on top of 23 other teams to have a functional, safe and competition-eligible car, something the team is incredibly proud of.
Returning to the University of Waterloo, Waterloo Hybrid is focusing on winning it all next year in 2015. The design phase has just started, the criteria and constraints have been set, and the team is ready to do it all over again. Anyone who is interested in joining Waterloo Hybrid can attend the weekly meetings held at 7:30 pm every Wednesday in room 2007 at Engineering 5. Visit Waterloo Hybrid at www.waterloohybrid.com or email the team at uwaterloohybrid@gmail.com. Waterloo Hybrid thrives off passion and innovation, the team is always looking out for those daredevils who are ready to take on challenges and become a part of the Hybrid family. It is not expected from anyone to know everything; but it’s expected that they are willing to learn. Come be the “future on track” as a part of Waterloo Hybrid.
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