FESB racing is a student organization from Split, Croatia. It started as a project of passionate students and professors in 2010. Since then, we’ve been competing in the internal combustion vehicle category, in both Formula Student and Moto Student competitions. The 2023/2024 season is a milestone in our progress, as this is the season we transition to the electric vehicle category in the Formula Student competitions. For our first season our goal is to create a vehicle that’s primarily safe, making it possible for future generations to do future development in a safe environment.
Our expectations are high for this season with many challenges for our electronics team. Along with all the rules mandatory PCB-s that all teams are required to have, we’ve also decided to set high standards for future generations and design our own BMS, VCU and a new steering wheel.
Vehicle Control Unit (VCU)
The VCU serves as the brains of the vehicle, making all sensor readings and sending all control signals via the high-speed CAN bus. It also serves as a Power Distribution Module (PDM), providing 5V outputs for our sensors. Our vehicle features 2 inverters, allowing the VCU to run a torque vectoring algorithm and send each inverter separate torque request commands.
Battery Management System (BMS)
The BMS is a crucial part of the accumulator, monitoring the cell voltages, temperatures, the accumulator current, as well as doing the cell voltage balancing functions. We’ve decided to go with the master-slave topology, using a STM32 microprocessor on the master PCB and the famous LTC6811 on the slaves.
Steering Wheel
Perhaps the most complex new design we created is our steering wheel. Built around the Raspberry Pi compute module, it serves as the main interface for the driver, providing us with the values of the current state of charge, cell, inverter and motor temperatures, as well as the current torque vectoring coefficients, allowing the driver to fine tune the driving experience.
Zaključak
The 2023/2024 season provided us with plenty of challenges, which we used as learning opportunities. In total we have created 12 new PCB designs and are hoping to integrate them all without major issues.
With the support of Eurocircuits, the FESB Racing team can develop our vehicle knowing we won’t have reliability issues with the PCB production quality and will maintain its reliability in the harsh motorsport environment we’re creating our vehicle for.