After a few long nights, and a lot of hard work, the Buckeye Bullet 2 made its track debut yesterday. We wanted to check the suspension and brakes, and see that everything was acting like it was supposed to. We were able to get some power to it from the fuel cells, and got the car up to 80 mph. We'll be getting things ready this week, and making a few changes to head back to the track this weekend!Enjoy some photos and a video from yesterday!
Over the last week, the resistor bank was given an upgrade: an old wind tunnel fan and a wind shroud. With the fan capable of reaching speeds of 80 mph, cooling the resistors is no longer a problem, and we can now do full, sustained testing on the fuel cells. This past Saturday, we again made some modifications to our hydrogen delivery to the fuel cells, and we were able to sustain power, and got just over 800 horsepower, the most power we have ever drawn from the fuel cells. So, we're making some more changes, and will be testing for an even longer duration (full run length, 90 seconds) later this week. Horray for horsepower!
Last night, OSU President Gordon Gee toured the student projects facility, taking a look at all of the project teams here at OSU. Some photos for your enjoyment...
(Photos Courtesy of John Neal)
OK, so news like this is always deserving of a post, so I wanted to get this up tonight. We made a test run 7pm tonight to test that the hydrogen was being regulated to the correct pressure, and now the cells are running very reliably at high current.
A special thanks to Ballard: Using their very valuable feedback, and newly acquired data from our bench test setup, we were able to correctly calibrate the hydrogen supply to the fuel cells. Horray for teamwork!
After making the changes, at 10pm tonight we pulled roughly 520kW (700 horsepower) from the fuel cell stacks for about 1 second after ramping and holding 400kW, then 450kW without any problems, for a total test length of 50 seconds. Everything was running great, but we ran out of hydrogen fuel, and we can't run without that. Needless to say, the resistors do heat up a bit:
Over the past few weeks we've been working to setup a full scale load test for the fuel cells, and this weekend, we were able to make some power (roughly 600 horsepower) with them. We're testing with basically a large, team-made toaster, so that we have a place to put the power to simulate a full load run on the car. This way we'll be able to tune and optimize the power output for the entire car setup. We'll just say that it makes a pretty good heater...
We'll have more information later, but for now, we've got some photos from the tests:
Alright, after a little bit of time with the simulations and the data from this summer, we are getting back to the dynamometer (or dyno, as it is more commonly known) here with the car. Actually, just the motor for now. We'll be testing the motor, tuning it, and recording gobs of data to be able to analyze it so that she'll be in tip-top shape for the coming spring and summer. Not only that, but we'll be using the battery system from the Buckeye Bullet 1 to put power into the motor, albeit not as much as we will get from the fuel cells. Additionally, we're working on doing some testing with the fuel cells, independent of the vehicle so we can ensure that we have consistent, reliable power when the system is put in the car. More will follow here (even some results) as we get further along and look towards more road testing and other improvements in the coming weeks and months.
Every once in a while, we get to be sentimental over here. Like when the BB1 first ran (October 17, 2002), or when the BB1 set the land speed record at 314.958 MPH (October 15, 2004). But now, we can celebrate the first milestone of the Buckeye Bullet 2: When the chassis construction began. Today marks the moment in which the ideas for the BB2, in computers and on paper, became a reality, making the ideas come to life as a tubular chassis. So, to celebrate, here are some photos from last December, at the beginning of the construction of the BB2.
Alright, it is far easier to type here back at the hotel than on the salt, and I've finally been able to get some photos up from our tech inspection (see below). We spent the day chasing a few small problems that might have prevented us from getting a good, consistent start at the line, and we think we've gotten those problems worked out. We will go through a mock start before towing the car over to the start line (where our push truck is reserving our spot). This will help us to make sure that we've got our run strategy down, and that the car will run reliably. So, the plan is to stick with our spot in line and get a run in tomorrow. It has taken a bit longer to get everything set up than we might have wanted, be we definitely have a car that will be more prepared to run down the track, and do so safely and to the satisfaction of Roger (our driver).
We spent all of Friday prepping the car to go through tech inspection, as well as prepare it to be race-ready. Everyone spent the time to get their finishing touches on the car, and we even had a friendly visit from the officials to do a quick, informal inspection of the car to see if there were any problems they might see before we take it up for the real tech inspection, and they said everything was looking good. We are shooting to go through technical inspection early on Saturday morning. Well it's time to head to the salt this morning, so I'm heading out of here, hopefully good news to come from tech inspection today...
We made it out to the salt today, working with Ford to get the pit area set up, as well as lend a hand to several racers out here with getting their pit areas set up. We're all pretty anxious about the car getting here soon, since there are some finishing touches that we'd all like to get on. The morning started out with what looked like a lot of water as we were driving out to the salt (see the photos), but quickly ended, and has dried up very well, so we should be set to have a good course!
We are steadily working getting everything race-ready, which included the completely stripping down the chassis, washing it thoroughly, and painting it. Well, now it no longer looks like bare steel but rather a slick looking black, which looks very cool with the stainless piping. We are now putting everything back into the car, to head over to TRC to do some final testing and checks before we pack the car up and send it on its way on Monday. We're capturing a time lapse of the reassembly, so look out for that one in the future... Well, it's back to the shop for me!
You may have been wondering where we've been for the last couple of days... well we've been working on the brakes. Before we can really go fast we have to be able to stop, so we thought that was pretty important. We finally have figured out how to make them work like we hoped they would, thanks to some good old fashioned problem solving. You may notice in the video and photos that there isn't much in the car currently... well we are in the process of taking apart the car to get the chassis painted, make some changes to some of the assemblies while they are out, to reassemble the car at the end of the week, do some final testing and get it sent out to Bonneville. Well I guess when I put it like that it doesn't sound so bad... is it really August already?
The final piece of the puzzle (probably one of the more important ones) finally arrived this afternoon... our tires. Several sets of land speed tires, to run on the salt flats, were delivered after many many months of legal ping pong. Some photo proof for you nonbelievers:
OK, this will be really quick since we are on our way back out to the track this morning, but we were finally able to get the car up and running yesterday. We did some brake testing, and switched to a new oxidant for the fuel cells, and finally let Roger open it up on the figure 8's right at sunset. Today we're going to pick up right where we were yesterday and keep tuning and adjusting the car all day. More to come!
Great success! The team worked through the night (preceded by many other late nights) to have a car that would be ready to test at TRC where we felt comfortable putting it on the ground for the first time. It took a little bit of effort to get the car in and out of the trailer (we used a forklift and the old lifter from the BB1, junkyard wars), but it made it to the track. We were able to do a no load spin test on the driveline with the wheels and suspension installed, and get it to the short straightaway on the road course that they have at TRC. The goal was to get the car to move under its own power, and we were able to do that, twice until we ran out of our air supply that we had brought with us. The team was very happy with the test, and we have a list of improvements that we would like to make to the car, and hope to have it back to the track this coming Saturday. We took some video of the tests, so enjoy!
