After two years of designing and building, Northwestern's Solar Car Team has taken its fifth completed solar car to the North American Solar Challenge to compete in a 2,400 mile race from Plano, Texas, to Calgary, Alberta.
"It's doing pretty well," said Michael Awadalla, a Northwestern senior and the Solar Car Team's Research and Development Chair. The group's newest car, dubbed the SC5, was running Wednesday in 11th place out of 15.
"Our rear wheel blew out yesterday; we had to call it a day," he said. "We started up today and its been running pretty smoothly."
Before the race even begins, each college's vehicle is examined through a series of tests to qualify for the competition. These tests include everything from brake and suspension tests to driving the car around a 1.7 mile loop in Crawford, Texas, for 60 laps. Of the 23 colleges that brought vehicles to the event, only 15 qualified for the race.
"We qualified on the first day and we started off," Awadalla said.
Though there are many specifications solar cars need to meet to participate in the Solar Car Challenge, there's still a lot of leeway in terms of the car's shape. Some teams try novel approaches to capture the most sunlight while maintaining an aerodynamic body, using curves unusual to normal vehicles.
Cindy Brown, head of media relations for the Solar Challenge, noted that even the driver's seat has become a variable for experimentation in the past.
"Instead of the driver in the middle, the driver is in the back," she explained. "Obviously the dynamics of the car are going to be important."
But the body of the cars is only half the battle when it comes to these races. Driving conditions typically seen as unfavorable for normal vehicle drivers, such as clouds or hills, can make all the difference for a solar car racer.
"It's all based on strategy," Brown said. "What kind of weather is upcoming, how fast we want to go to get to a certain point."
Cloudy days have plagued the 15 cars competing in the race, following them from their starting point in Texas to Macalester, Oklahoma.
"Intermittent showers and thick cloud cover plagued the car like a mosquito and threatened to not allow us to charge the batteries as they were drawn down," wrote Northwestern graduate Mitch Samson on the Solar Team's blog about the race's first day. "Instead of outrunning the clouds, NU Solar chose to run conservatively and averaged speeds around 25 mph for the whole day."
Northwestern's Solar Car Team, currently comprised of about 40 undergraduates, has built five solar cars since it was founded in 1998. They did best in the North American Solar Challenge with their second car, 'Nergy, which came in 26th out of 30 cars in 2001. This year, Awadalla hopes their car will beat their record and break the final ten.
"I'm pretty confident that we'll finish in the top ten," Awadalla said. "Just making it to the finals would be a huge accomplishment; if we can finish in the top ten that's going to be great."
jacob-nelson@northwestern.edu
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