I was elected to the position of Vice President of the team for my junior year (2013-2014). Duties included assisting in managing team resources and being a point of contact with our sponsors in addition to redesigning the battery enclosures. Major changes included a more robust mounting system, improved side impact protection, and better electrical isolation. The batteries were held to a steel plate in the battery box by interfacing with the grooves in their insulation. The steel base plate was held to a plastic bar which was anchored to the bottom of the battery enclosure. The plastic bar had weld nuts embedded in it, which allowed for robust mechanical connections between the batteries and the enclosure, but maintained electrical isolation as is required by the Formula Hybrid Rules.

Holding the battery to the box	Battery packaging	Mounted on car

Mounting bar cross-section view

In addition to developing the packaging for the batteries, I was in charge of protecting them from a side impact. This involved designing and fabricating a steel cage around the battery boxes on the side of the frame.

We came in 2nd place for the second year in a row, and we were awarded the IEEE award for excellence in electrical vehicle engineering. All that separated us from first place was a single lap on the endurance course, where instead of taking it easy for at least the first lap, I put the pedal to the floor and browned out the battery management system (BMS), putting us out of contention. Oops.

My first major project with the team was during my sophomore year (2012-2013). I was tasked with developing a system to mount the batteries to the car and protect them from a side impact. Luckily, during my freshman year I was given the job of assembling the previous design which involved irregularly shaped aluminum walls and about 1000 pop rivets, so I had a good idea of what not to do. Instead of making a custom enclosure during my sophomore year, I opted to use off-the-shelf parts to make the enclosure easier to build and maintain.

Figure 1: CleanSpeed 1.0 proposed design	Figure 2: CleanSpeed 1.0 final design

I used a Stanley tool box as the shell of the enclosure because they are lightweight, waterproof, and inexpensive. I designed a steel skeleton to affix the battery cells to the inside of the enclosure and an exterior cage to protect the battery from a side impact. There were two features of this design that I knew would violate competition rules; the polyethylene box was readily flammable, and the enclosure had conductive penetrations. I fixed these issues before the competition by using an intumescent paint to shield the plastic box and by designing acrylic caps to electrically isolate the inside of the enclosure.