Solar and electric cars
(J
Boland,
V Gaitsgory,
P Howlett and
P Pudney)
In 1993 the group worked with Aurora Vehicles and the CSIRO to
develop a driving strategy for the Aurora Q1 solar racing car in the
1993 World Solar Challenge. Aurora was the first Australian team to
finish the race, and fifth overall, completing the 3000km race at an
average speed of 70km/h.
The collaboration with Aurora continued beyond the 1993 race. In 1994 the Scheduling and Control group was awarded a three-year ARC Collaborative Research Grant to investigate the effect on the optimal driving strategy of various battery models, various traction models, gradients, and spatially varying irradiance. The optimal strategies gave a small but important improvement over the constant-speed strategy used in 1993. The team crashed their car in the 1996 World Solar Challenge, but went on to win in 1999, and came second, with an average speed of 91km/h, in 2001. The team also holds several world records, including the longest distance travelled in a solar car (13050 km around Australia, 2001) and the highest average speed for 100 km (132km/h). Peter Pudney, who has been the race strategist for the team since 1993, completed his PhD thesis on energy management strategies for solar cars in 2000.
In 1997 Vladimir Gaitsgory and John Boland joined the group to investigate stochastic optimal control strategies for solar cars and for other solar applications, such as water pumping.
In 1997 the University and three Adelaide secondary schools formed the South Australian Solar Car Consortium. The Consortium raced its first solar car, Ned, in the 1999 World Solar Challenge, and came first in its class. In 2000 the Consortium was joined by Regency TAFE, and has built a second car. Peter Pudney has been a key contributor to this project.
The Aurora RMIT 101 solar car in Brisbane traffic during its world-record breaking trip around Australia, January 2002.