Technical Paper
Design of the Wild Solarcat-A Solar Electric Vehicle for GM Sunrayce 1990
1990-08-01
901513
As participants in GM Sunrayce 1990, students in Villanova University's College of Engineering were required to design, build, and race a solar powered electric vehicle. Since the car was required to race over an 1800 mile distance, reliability was an important design issue. Other design features of equal importance were driver safety and vehicle stability. GM also imposed additional design constraints such as minimum braking distance and maximum dimensions on solar panel and vehicle size. In this paper we will describe the tradeoffs made in designing our solar electric vehicle. This will include design considerations regarding both the mechanical and electrical subsystems separately as well as overall system integration. Our final design comprised a modified airfoil body made of a lightweight kevlar and nomex honeycomb sandwich supported on an aluminum tube space frame.