About the team

Cornell Racing is Cornell University’s Formula SAE team. The forty undergraduates on the exclusive team design, manufacture, and test a formula-style racecar each year. Each teammate, including myself, dedicates upwards of twenty hours per week to working on the car - we even spend a couple weeks of our winter break to manufacture parts during January - a time when there are no classes - so FSAE can be everyone’s top priority.

I joined the team when we transitioned to an electric powertrain. Our electric racecar runs on our custom battery package (accumulator). The current iteration of the car outputs more than 10-times the power of the average American home. [1]

About the car

Frame: Student-designed and in-house fabricated full carbon-fiber monocoque

Suspension & Unsprung: 4-wheel independent double A-arm suspension, Pushrod-actuated Ohlins ttx25 mk2 2-way adjustable dampers, 18.0 x 7.5 – 10 R25B Hoosier Tires

Electronics: Student-designed PCBs and brought up in-house, Modular CAN data collection, MoTeC ADL3 data logger

Powertrain: 3-Phase AC Permanent Magnet Motor, 360V 6.5 kWh Lithium-Ion Battery Pack

Performance: Peak Power: 108 Hp (80 kW), Torque: 177 lbft (240 Nm), Top speed: 95 mph, Lateral acceleration: 2.2 g, Acceleration 0-60 mph: 2.7 sec, Weight: ~399 lb, no driver

What I do

I am the electrical lead for the 2021-2022 school year. I will be overseeing the electronics side of the car and plan to contribute to most integration and tesing-related things. Since I have much experience with board design, I can also act as a mentor to the current board designers.

I joined the team during my freshman fall where I was quickly trained to use softwares including Autodesk Inventor and Altium Designer in addition to learning to weld, mill, and lathe. My freshman year, my main responsibility was the Temperature Sensing Module (TSM), a PCB that outputs digital signals when thee temperature of the battery cells inside accumulator gets too high or low. Sophomore year, I am working on two Shutdown Boxes that act as safety circuits for the car and for charging. The Grounded Low Voltage Shutdown Box (GLV SB) immediately shuts down the accumulator if one of a variety of fault conditions specified by Formula SAE’s rules are met. The second board I am responsible for is the Charger Shutdown Box (Charge SB), which is used to safely charge the accumulator.

I detail the research, design, and implementation process for each of these three projects on my website. To find out more, click the corresponding link in the paragraph above or find it in the navigation bar.