Experimental Study of the Performance of a Low Consumption Electric Car Prototype

• Autor(a) principal: Correia, Alexandre Manuel Domingues
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/6508
• topic: Coeficiente de Arrasto Aerodinâmico; Coeficiente de Atrito de Rolamento; Shell Eco-Maratona®; Velocidade Terminal; Domínio/Área Científica::Engenharia e Tecnologia::Outras Engenharias e Tecnologias

In this dissertation all steps to characterize the performance of an electric prototype road vehicle of high energy-efficiency are portrayed. The AERO@Ubi team from the University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, developed a vehicle that competed in the 2014 and 2015 editions of the Shell Eco-Marathon®, which took place in Rotterdam. The team presented a prototype that stands out for its innovative methods of movement and design. Among these innovations is a distinguished aerodynamic body, that differs from the conventional form of water drop, and instead uses a turning that consists in tilting the prototype with only one wheel at the front and employs radial tires as well as ceramic bearings. The prototype was subjected to several tests in order to characterize the aerodynamic drag coefficient, the rolling friction coefficient and the lift coefficient in order to quantify the losses related to friction and aerodynamic drags.These tests, which will be described in detail in Chapter 3 can be divided into three stages: a preliminary stage, which included topographic measurements of corridors and respective launch ramps at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Beira Interior as well as of roads with different slopes at Tortosendo Industrial Park were carried out; an initial stage, where the car components were tested separately , without or with minimal influence from other components or weather conditions; a final stage, where the prototype was tested, as a whole, through downhill roads in order to verify different terminal velocities down different slopes. The results are analyzed and compared with results obtained in other studies. In the initial stage the results were encouraging as the prototype revealed a rolling friction coefficient value of 0.002 leading to a foreseen total of 2 N of rolling friction force for a 1000 N of the prototype with the pilot weight. In the final stage of testing, the results increase significantly to 9 N and this may suggest an unidentified feature of the prototype. The prototype obtained a result of 331 km/kWh, reaching the 19th place for prototypes with electric battery in the Shell Eco-Marathon® Europe.