Western Formula Racing 2024

My second year on the team was a lot more focused. I was given a subsystem to take care of, and was part of a relatively small electrical team that had to do big things.

After witnessing the disaster of last year, having a beautiful car with a great mechanical design that could not run due to faulty wiring and an unreliable (and unsafe!) electrical system, I was dead set on creating a robust strategy that would stand the test of the rest of the team harsh track conditions and months of testing. I started by creating a high-level block diagram of the entire vehicle, to get an idea of what had to be connected where, and what we were going to buy vs. reuse vs. custom make:

This diagram would serve as the guidance for the rest of manufacturing. After compiling a list of all components, we got to work putting the entire harness in the Solidworks model for the car, something we did for the very first time this year which helped us a lot in keeping everything organized. I created a document to lay out our wire harnessing strategy, and included a detailed step-by-step process which lead to almost zero harness-related faults this year, compared to the constant struggles of the previous year.

Combining a fully CAD-ed harness with a robust strategy allowed for more focus on the other parts of the car, such as our new all-custom ECUs. In addition to harness design, I worked to maintain, integrate, and debug the electrical systems in the car, both hardware and software, and worked on designing a power-switching PCB that served as a fuse box and power distribution module.

All in all, this lead the team to have the earliest driving car in the team's history, the first endurance finish in EV history, and the first in 7 years! We earned the Engineering the Future award at FSAE New Hampshire for our innovative Low Voltage system design and placed 8th out of 35 schools, and earned the Efficiency award at FSAE Michigan, finishing 20th out of 75 schools.

Next year, I'll be leading the electrical side of the team, working on an a revised and updated version of our custom ECU, improving our data collection, and ensuring that when I'm gone, there can be knowledgeable members to take over my role.

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