11.04.2015
Formula Student (FS) is Europe’s most established educational motorsport competition, run by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Backed by industry and high profile engineers, the competition aims to inspire and develop enterprising and innovative young engineers. Universities from across the globe are challenged to design and build a single-seat racing car in order to compete in static and dynamic events, which demonstrate their understanding and test the performance of the vehicle. Around 50 cars are judged in seven different categories.
The e-gnition team of students from the Technical University of Hamburg (TUHH) in Germany has set itself the goal to build each year a new electric race car and participate at the Formula Student events. In 2014 they won with the egn14-model the “clean Mobility Award” within the Eco Design Category. The egn14 is the third vehicle manufactured from the Technical University of Hamburg, which is based on the findings of the previous models as a logical development.The team behind the racing car includes 56 students from all disciplines and semesters. The egn14 was further developed in the field of lightweighting in comparison to the previous model. “After a saving of 50 kg from egn12 to egn13 we were also able to save 50 kg and thus significantly improve performance of the egn14” tells Etienne Müller, the e-gnition team leader. The entire car body was built with Bcomp’s ampliTex™ technical fabrics.
Another competitor in the Formula Student, the Racetech Racing Team, is a group of 50 students from the Technical University of Bergakademie Freiberg in Germany. They have faced the challenge to build and race a fully electric racing car in only one year development. To meet the profile of the universities resources, the team focused on a high degree of innovations and scores with unique and self-developed features together with resource-efficient materials and manufacturing processes. These include the use of recyclable metallic materials and the replacement of conventional glass and carbon fibre composites by sustainable natural fibre composites.
Racetech started to use the Bcomp’s ampliTex™ products for different body and cover panels, such as the dashboard, to build up know-how in working with these modern materials.
With an improved layup design, further prospective components as aerodynamic devices could be built with ampliTex™ technical fabrics in the next generation’s electric racing car. This concept and a highly motivated team took the car to the top ten of the Formula Student Electric world ranking list and won in the category “Cost Report”. It was also the most energy efficient car of the FS Austria 2014.
Congratulations to the two teams!
