Written 13/08/22 by Tom Johnson

First and foremost, the goal of this project is to produce an accumulator that could theoretically be built in the real world and conform to all the regulations set out by the IMechE. UH Racing's approach to Formula Student is that the accumulator I design will be carried forward to next years Class 1 team, so while this project focusses on the design and simulation of the accumulator - considerations as to the physical product need to be taken.

One of the main goals for UH27s accumulator is to greatly reduce the mass, which, as mentioned previously, benefits our handling, acceleration and deceleration. The mass of last years accumulator was calculated to be 64.36kg. This was done within CAD, so it is likely not to be particularly accurate in the real-world. Given the changes I plan to make to the capacity and cooling setup, I am aiming for 56kg within CAD.

Additionally, I am conscious that Voltage is still important, and the philosophy we used last year should be carried over. I am aiming for our peak Voltage to be at least 550V.

As I am eager to implement regenerative braking, as well as reduce the mass of the accumulator, the overall capacity of the accumulator will be considerably reduced. Based on the running data we have from previous UH cars, as well as the team-reported capacities from FS Germany 2021 and FS Austria 2022, I would like to aim for between 6 kWh and 6.5 kWh. Of course, the most important thing is that our car can finish the endurance event, so I will be taking precautions to ensure we are able to do this.

One consideration that isn't necessarily performance related is that of our carbon footprint. I began looking at this last year, and selected more locally-sourced components for our HV internals. However, I want to go further, and perhaps even look at different materials for the TSAC, insulation and segment casing in order to reduce our environmental impact.