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!
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.
Well after being delayed by little things here and there, the car got some very valuable track time at TRC. The brakes were tested, and worked great (even better than the brakes in the chase car we were using). The shifting has gotten worked out, so Roger was able to go through the gears. The fuel cells powered up without any hiccups, and everything seems to be running smoothly. We will be packing everything up tonight into the semi trailer, car, spare parts, equipment and all, so that it can leave by 9am tomorrow (Saturday) morning.
Finally, enjoy some video that we took at the track yesterday and today (the sound is worth listening to, the car sounds pretty unique):
Well, we made it back from the track today, ending the day with a three-pass run where we made it to the maximum allowable speed at TRC of 100 mph. So, we're into the triple digits on fuel cell power. We have managed to find a temporary solution to some of our braking problems, with a permanent fix to implement this coming week, and just make sure that we've got our track organization down. And we've finally got some new video of the car actually moving, from the perspective of the chase truck, hot off the digital video press.
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!
