Last month, the team took Infinium for several hours of wind tunnel testing at Jacobs Engineering's facility at Allen Park, MI. The purpose of the test was for our aerodynamics division to conduct intensive flow visualization studies and learn more about the airflow properties of Infinium in order to improve upon it's design for our next car. "It was definitely a very valuable experience" said Robert Forsyth, a junior in Aerospace Engineering. "We did a very thorough analysis and we strongly feel that there is significant room for improvement".

Smokin' Santosh

Along with the traditional yarn and smoke visualization tests, the team also tried something new this year: oil pattern flow tests. A very slight coating of oil mixed with fluorescent dye on the lower surface of the car produced streaks when subjected to 65mph gusts of wind. The properties of the streak lines indicate the local characteristics of the flow. The fluorescent dye in the oil and a blacklight, both of which were generously donated to the team by Tracerline, combine beautifully to greatly increase the visiblility of the streaklines.

Oil patterns on the fairing

"Most of the resistive force on a solar car comes from the aerodynamic drag. Thus, managing the air flow around the car to mitigate this drag while satisfying all of the complex design constraints is one of our biggest priorities", explains Santosh Kumar, the team's Engineering Director.

The scale and depth of the wind tunnel test will certainly aid the team's quest to design and build the most aeroodynamic car for the 2011 World Solar Challenge. To that end we would like to thank the following sponsors who helped make the test a success:

The 2010 race crew has brought back Michigan's 3rd straight National Championship and 6th overall.  Infinium crossed the finish line 2 hours 12 minutes and 9 seconds ahead of the second place team Minnesota, the official stands can be found here.

Over the course of 6 days, Infinium traveled 1,100 miles averaging 40 mph, which is amazing considering the number of stop lights on this route!  The race crew only had 15 minutes on the side of the the road making a minor electrical repair. To bring back a championship the team had to run a flawless race.  Any downtime or penalties could have cost the team the race, but the team worked hard during the months prior to the race to ensure this didn't happen.

With the race now over, the team turns its sights to the 2011 project.  More pictures from the race should be uploaded in the near future.

Greeting from Tulsa!

Those who followed the team for the last two years may remember me; I raced as the Head Strategist in both NASC '08 and GGC '09 before "retiring" from the team. This ASC cycle we are starting a new tradition: former race crew members are traveling with the team as advisors. Jeff Rogers (micro-electric WSC '07, NASC '08 and GGC '09), Steve Hechtman (electrical/driver WSC '07 and NASC '08, Race Manager GGC '09) and I will be following the team along the race in Emeritus, a F-150 generously on loan from Ford. In addition to sharing our racing insights with the next generation of UM solar car raycers, we will be taking plenty of videos and photo. Expect plenty of blog posts from Emeritus during the next week.

After a delicious breakfast at the Embassy Suites - Dallas Lovefield this morning, we departed for Tulsa. Approximately five hours later we arrived at the Hilton Garden Inn - Tulsa Airport, our "base of operations" for tonight. Members of the main caravan (Blue, Chase and Lead) choreographed and rehearsed roadside procedures, while others began to unload the semi and catch up on e-mails.

After a long 16 hour and almost 1200 mile drive straight from Ann Arbor, the team arrived in Dallas, Texas yesterday around noon. Despite the long overnight stretch we had no trouble keeping each driver awake and made it Dallas safe, but tired. Luckily we were able to drive straight to the Embassy Suites - Dallas Love Field. Embassy Suites is supporting our team this year with six very comfortable rooms, that were much appreciated after such a long journey across the country. Along with our rooms, the team woke up early this morning to take advantage of the complementary breakfast offered by the hotel. 

After breakfast today, we are working from the atrium of the hotel before we head to the track in Cresson to meet the semi trailer around 6 pm. 

Hard at work in the Atrium

What a week! Mock race was really cool experience. Driving the solar car on open roads and trying to hone my skills at maintaining speed on hills and turns was so much fun. As a member of the electrical division, it was really amazing seeing how well the electrical system performed over the 4 days of racing, and it really made me realize how great of a job the last team did in designing it. I think the mock race gave the team members, new and old, a good idea of what we will be expecting in terms of problems such as troublesome "just before the top of the hill" red lights / stop si... i mean RED signs (haha) and swapping out spares quickly to save time.

Also, looking back, I feel like I joined the team at the right time. I joined while the team was still racing Infinium in Australia and now I will be racing Infinium in ASC2010. Racing a car you didn't build may seem less fun, but I think this will help us to design our next car. I feel that having a good sense of what kind of obstacles the car will face in a race is absolutely essential when designing the car. The process of the team preparing itself and Infinium for ASC gives us the opportunity to generally get familiar with what our next car will need to overcome.

Overall this week was tons of fun, even though we all probably felt disgusting from the blistering heat and 2 days of Base-X with no shower.