TU Delft: DUT24 Motor Controller Launch

Blog by Formula Student Team Delft

Formula Student Team Delft has been building top of its class racing cars for more then 20 years. To push our performance to the next level, we’ve been designing and implementing self-made PCBs into our cars. The teams passion and determination to push the limits of a fast and high quality racing car is only possible thanks to our trusted partners at Eurocircuits.

With our new car, the DUT24, we are pushing further then what the industry leading motor controllers can achieve. Our modular design of the motorcontrol system allows us to independently test and improve all aspects of the system, while also being backwards compatible, with our older motor controllers. This enables us to improve our testing, since testsing individual modules is more time efficient then full system testing. Here is more information on the low voltage controller board and the high voltage current path of our updated motor controllers.

DUT24 Motorcontroller Low Voltage

Our LV board is the brains of our motor controllers. It takes in the various inputs such as torque targets, motor angle, motor temperature, high voltage current and performs the necessary calculations and safety checks. The output is the PWM signal for each phase that is necessary for the inverters. For the latest iteration of our LV board, we have implemented an SD card slot and additional signal outputs for data acquisition. This data will be beneficial for software improvements.

DUT24 High Voltage Current Path

This board’s purpose is to link the accumulator DC output of the car to the 3 phase motor inputs through inverters. As with every high voltage board on the car, the current path has very strict rules on trace widths and spacings. The latest iteration of this board ensures that the spacing between the voltage terminals further increases with the addition of slits on the board itself. Also, utilizing newer, smaller filtering capacitors allow for the overall package of the controller system to be shrunk.

Once again we thank Eurocircuits for being a trusted partner, allowing us to improve the electrical system of our latest car the DUT24.