AURORA

The University of Minnesota Solar Vehicle Project

After extensive research and development, the group, and their car Aurora, were selected as one of the 36 Universities to compete in Sunrayce 93. Held in June, the race will travel through the heart of the United States, starting in the Dallas area and finishing here in the Twin Cities six days later. To insure the teams will be well prepared, Sunrayce officials required that the teams qualify by completing a 50 mile course in under 2.5 hours, an average of 20 miles per hour.

After over a week of working around the clock, the team was overjoyed to see their car make its maiden voyage at the Indianapolis Speedway, for the Eastern Regional Qualifier. The car was now real, and it was magnificent.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and wind tunnel testing were used to create a truly revolutionary aerodynamic design. On its second day of existence with only one sixth of the solar array in place, the car qualified with an average speed of 35 miles per hour. With some key refinements, Aurora will be exactly what the group always strived for, the state of the art.

Earth Week

by Bill Frauly, Aerospace Engineering Graduate

Aurora was seen at the Department of Natural Resources on Thursday, April 27th for the Earth Week festivities. With the car in pieces for further development, it took an early morning scramble to get the car ready, but it was worth it. Aurora received a great deal of attention from all, especially passers by on the street. The soon to be patented Aurora neck snap was done by many.

On Friday the 28th Aurora lead the pack for the University's Non-Pollute Commute. Approximately fifty bicyclists, and a few in-line skaters accompanied the car during its trek from the St. Paul campus to the Minneapolis campus. Aurora team members were around all day answering questions, responding to comments, and even taking a pricture or two. (Adopt-A-Cell forms were in hand).

With a campus police escort, Aurora shot up to 48 mph on the trip back to St. Paul. Not bad going up hill and into the wind! Now its back in the workshop for further development so the Earth Week celebrity will be ready for the big challenge, Sunrayce 93.

Solar Cars Go On Diets Too

by Scott Grabow, Mechanical Engineer Graduate

During the past two weeks, people who have been working on getting Aurora ready for the Regional Qualifer(RQ) have noticed that Aurora is soundly designed, but is also carrying around some extra weight which can be eliminated.

So during our time at the RQ, we looked at other teams weight and ways for doing things. Some of the ideas are ingenious for removing those "baby fat" parts which are added on to get the car ready to go for the first time.

Some things that definitely will be changing are the manufacturing of the array, changes to the suspension, and changes to the canopy. Each of these changes are not only to improve the sound design, but to drop Aurora's weight in the order of 100-200 pounds.

Weight for Aurora is a parameter we are always trying to remove, this can be seen by the fact that Aurora right now weighs around 625 to 700 lbs. While several of the vehicles that competed in the RQ also weighed about the same amount. Especially Virgina Tech's Solarray IIA, which is the second car of the same design. This car weighs 700 lbs without driver, and is only abou the size of the tunnel on Aurora.

With these weight reductions we should be able to move Aurora from the "I am a solar car" league to "World Challenger Solar Car" league. While still keeping in mind that:

1. Aurora is soundly designed
2. Aurora also has some extra weight that can be eliminated

Recently at Brainerd International Raceways(BIR) Aurora was found to weigh only 677 pounds. So in the time after Indianapolis, we have managed to reduce the weight considerably by nearly 75 pounds versus the vehicle that was at Regional Qualifiers.