Waking up at 5:45 a.m. is never easy. But especially for a group of highschoolers who have fought jet lag, the intense Texas heat, and the accumulating fatigue after a week of solar car racing. Usually, we were practically dragging each other out of bed to arrive at the speedway on time, yet Race Day […]
We’re in the home-stretch of the season — with only three weeks until the car is shipped off to Fort Worth, TX, the Green Energy Team has been hard at work putting the finishing touches on this season’s car. Over the past few weeks, we’ve officially become a solar car! Our seven separate panels have […]
The solar array frame is one of the most crucial components of the car. Spanning the entire five-meter length of the vehicle, the frame provides the necessary support to safely and securely hold our solar array in place. Resting on top of the car’s metal chassis, the frame’s hinged design allows the team to rotate […]
There are a lot of moving parts at a race and a lot of planning that goes into traveling to Texas, but perhaps the most important variable is our race plan and the strategy that goes along with it. Logistics and travel plans are important to make sure the team arrives on time and are […]
In finalizing the shell for the Raisbeck Aviation High School Green Energy Team’s Solar Car, the objective was to find the best-designed aerodynamic model. As the structural and mechanical design lead, I worked to complete and test our models in both Autodesk Flow and Siemens STAR-CCM+, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. CFD software essentially creates […]
The RAHS Green Energy Team has been hard at work constructing the new and improved chassis for this year’s race! We started the build process by creating a jig to ensure the chassis is in accordance with our design specifications and the Solar Car Challenge safety requirements. Alignment of core structural members was key to […]
We are finally wrapping up the design phase and transitioning into building our second solar car. We plan to remain faithful to the first design’s successes while making significant changes to the exterior layout and solar array. The most fundamental change is to the body of the car: In order to reduce drag, we’ve moved […]
For the past two weeks, we have been working day and night on our first “mock-pit” design for the solar car. The frame is assembled out of our scrap metal and plywood sheets, the bars connected together with plywood gussets. Our most daunting challenge is that we have to ensure the driver can get out […]
Last week, our team mounted and wired the six solar panels on top of the car’s solar panel rack! This major milestone is what makes our car solar! Each panel is laye on top of an aluminum panel rack that provides structural support to each panel. The rack is attached to the car with two […]
As we are starting to focus on finishing up the structure of the car, we have a lot of welding to get done putting on structural supports. George, our team welder, has been helping other students on the team learn how to weld. As you can see in the picture to the right, there are […]
