4 groups of Rice College engineering college students transformed a 1997 Chevy P30 supply van into a totally electrical car in lower than a 12 months, utilizing a mix of elements scavenged from out-of-use autos, custom-built parts and off-the-shelf objects.
With over 20 college students concerned total, the electrical conversion van venture, or E-VAN, is a real feat not solely when it comes to engineering design but in addition timing and coordination. The scholars labored on E-VAN as a part of their capstone design tasks β― an vital a part of the Rice engineering training that serves as an event to get hands-on expertise growing and constructing options to concrete engineering challenges.
The venture will compete within the annual Harrell and Carolyn Huff engineering design showcase and competitors, which is able to happen 4:30β7 p.m. April 11 on the Ion, Houston. The occasion, which is open to the general public, is a chance to expertise the creativity and dedication of Rice undergraduate engineering college students whose tasks developed on the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) translate classroom information into purposeful engineering designs with a real-world objective.
As a result of the venture concerned a number of groups engaged on it concurrently, college students needed to navigate a posh timeline accommodating not solely the design and execution of {custom} elements but in addition provide chain points and supply schedules for off-the-shelf elements.
One other vital problem was integrating the entire aftermarket elements right into a single, functioning system and designing round their current specs. The venture required a whole lot of coordination between all staff members, serving as a crash course in superior venture administration.
Powertrain
Rice College Powertrain Improvement, or staff Powertrain, was in control of the general mechanics of the van similar to steering and wheels in addition to techniques integration for the van as an entire. Rice engineering seniors Javier Alatore, Juan Vera Garza, Austin Greer, Diego Lopez-Bernal, Gerardo Rivera, Antoine Wiley and Lindsay Wright dealt with among the venture’s main design parts, together with points surrounding the battery and its housing, gearbox, motor and inverter specs.
Greer, who has prior expertise with electrical conversion work, was concerned with the venture from its earliest phases.
“The ‘why’ of this venture for me is to begin with as a result of I like vehicles, and if someone says, ‘Hey, let’s construct a automobile,’ I will say ‘sure’ it doesn’t matter what it’s,” Greer mentioned. “However actually, this was a chance to go all out on a capstone design venture.”
The van has a most vary of 100 miles on a freeway and about 225 miles in inner-city situations. Its high pace is about 86 miles an hour.
“That’s truly fairly quick,” mentioned Wright, who helped coordinate every part powertrain-related. “We’re actually happy with how the venture turned out. It is most likely one of many greatest and brightest issues we have completed at Rice.”
For Lopez-Bernal, the chance to get hands-on expertise engaged on autos was one of many preliminary appeals of going to Rice.
“My dad truly flips vehicles for a dwelling, so I’ve all the time been round vehicles, and I’ve all the time been all in favour of taking one thing that is damaged or perhaps not in a great state after which making it into one thing extra,” Lopez-Bernal mentioned. “Particularly right here in Houston, which is such an vital vitality hub, attending to work on a venture that pertains to a whole lot of the broader conversations on vitality was an excellent alternative, and it was a whole lot of enjoyable.”
Rivera emphasised the significance of attending to step out of the classroom and construct a purposeful object to serve campus wants.
“All of it got here full circle, and it has been fairly a journey getting to place that information to work on a venture that may get to reside on and get used every day,” Rivera mentioned.
Electrical structure
The Electrical Automobile Digital Controls Design staff, or EVAN Electronics, is made up of seniors Kirubel Ghebreab, Nathan Hsiao, Eric Press and Alois Chipfurutse. Their objective was “to design a strong, well-documented and scalable digital management system that integrates all car elements” in addition to the opposite techniques “along with implementing autonomous driving and parking.”
“This car mainly lives or dies by the electronics,” Greer mentioned, highlighting the difficult activity confronted by the staff in control of the van’s electrical structure, which has to interface with the thermal, energy drive and sprint elements amongst different issues. This was particularly troublesome on condition that lots of the elements got here from various kinds of autos.
“Having the ability to get these automotive elements from different autos to perform β― and never simply perform however perform in an built-in method β― is an enormous deal,” Greer mentioned. “If this truck works, it is largely because of {the electrical} structure. My favourite factor on this truck is one thing inconspicuous that you just may not even discover, particularly the blind spot sensors. It took a whole bunch of hours to get these sensors to work β― they’re one of many hardest issues to combine.”
Thermal system
Group Thermobileβmade up of Maya Chhong, Olivia Goganian, Anisha Lal, Jacob Lee, Andrew Linhart and Ellie Schweikerβwas in control of the van’s thermal administration system, together with HVAC for the cabin/driver, electrical motor and inverter cooling and electrical car battery cooling. One of many modern options of their design was utilizing a dual-pump system and counting on stress reasonably than a valve to direct fluid stream.
Not one of the Thermobile staff members had any expertise working with autos going into the venture, so the primary few weeks had been spent simply determining how air-con in vehicles labored. With solely expertise in thermodynamics from lectures, Thermobile was tasked with designing, procuring and putting in a novel thermal system into the E-VAN.
“It was a steep studying curve, however it was undoubtedly price it, as a result of after that we had been working so effectively,” mentioned Chhong, who along with Greer is likely one of the venture’s early architects. “We have been going into the van a number of occasions every week, and we received to essentially wrench on it and truly use a bunch of instruments I’ve by no means used earlier than.”
Linhart, who plans on pursuing patent regulation after commencement, mentioned he discovered it rewarding to work together with Rice’s know-how switch workplace and consider the venture from the angle of mental property rights. The staff seemed into securing a patent for his or her dual-pump design which is exclusive for electrical autos, however the fee was prohibitive.
Lee, a mechanical engineering main with an curiosity in thermal fluids, mentioned that regardless of the main focus of their particular venture space, the vary of experience that staff Thermobile tackled reached nicely past simply thermodynamics: Controlling the elements of their system required writing code and designing logic diagrams, whereas putting in elements required hands-on expertise and understanding warmth switch and stress evaluation.
“This venture actually is a mix of all of the mechanical engineering programs we have taken,” Chhong mentioned. “It has been actually fulfilling to be utilizing what now we have discovered in a real-life scenario.”
Dashboard
Group DΓ©jΓ Vu labored on the van’s dashboard, aiming for a “user-friendly and ergonomic design befitting of the E-VAN.” Freshmen Devika Dua, Aoife Shannon, Joseph Engelking and Evan Ho changed the van’s previous dashboardβwhich was utterly nonfunctional and needed to be ripped outβwith a picket dashboard outfitted with a navigation panel, optimally-placed air-con vents and a {custom} digital instrument cluster that shows pace, battery degree, regenerating energy and extra.
As a result of it’s the fundamental person interface, the staff took particular care with the position of the totally different parts to make sure each security and luxury. A custom-built head unit gives wi-fi Carplay, Bluetooth and radio entry, permitting customers to play songs, choose a radio station or navigate. The dashboard consists of numerous {custom} elements in addition to elements sourced from a junkyard.
“I truly went to a junkyard and pulled these out of vehicles,” Ho mentioned. “For instance, now we have a gear selector from a Honda Odyssey, a ‘push to begin’ button from a Toyota Prius, the vents are from a Chevy HHR, and so forth.”
The staff went on to 3D print {custom} ABS mounts to carry every part within the dashboard.
“We had to make use of pc software program to 3D scan the elements to be sure that every half would match,” Engelking mentioned.
Shannon, who put in the steel framing holding the dashboard in place, mentioned that the method saved staff members on their toes up till the very finish: Every week earlier than the staff needed to make their ultimate prototype, they realized that the dashboard seemed higher if it was flipped round.
“Initially, it was imagined to be extra angled to provide us extra space to work with,” Shannon mentioned. “We needed to utterly reconfigure the designs and transfer every part round.”
The E-VAN venture received began as a dialog between Richard Johnson, who serves as senior govt director for sustainability in Rice’s sustainability workplace, and Mark Ditman, who served as Rice’s vp for housing and eating previous to his retirement in 2023 and as interim senior affiliate vp for infrastructure, sustainability and providers. The thought was to take an older van owned by housing and eating and switch it right into a sustainability-related venture.
Initially, the suggestion was to do that as a part of a category, however that plan didn’t pan out. As an alternative, David Trevas, a Rice mechanical engineering lecturer who mentors scholar groups on their capstone design tasks, introduced the concept of changing the van into {an electrical} car to Greer, who in flip advised turning it right into a senior capstone design alternative.
The E-VAN journey is much from over: The van will proceed to function a platform for scholar tasks, and the momentum from E-VAN has additionally spurred curiosity in reviving the Rice Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) membership to create a group round automotive autos and work on automotive tasks at Rice.
“Within the current, we’re targeted on restoring and overhauling nonoperational autos to purposeful capability,” Ho mentioned. “Our first venture is a hybrid-electric conversion of a 2004 Porsche Boxster. Our long-term objective is to take part in SAE competitions.”
This venture was supported partially by way of a beneficiant donation from the Rice Housing and Eating Division.
Group mentors are Trevas and Gary Woods, a professor within the observe {of electrical} and pc engineering. Kevin Holmes, an OEDK lecturer, guided the dashboard staff venture throughout a freshman design class, and Roberto Dugnani, a lecturer in mechanical engineering, additionally has been mentoring the staff over the previous semester.
