Formula Student
Formula Student (FS) is an international student engineering competition where teams from around the world design, build, test, and race a small-scale formula style racing car and are judged on different criteria.
GKN Automotive Innovation Centre has been supporting the rise in Electric entries by offering both financial sponsorship to the IMechE that runs the UK competition and technical expertise to a number of teams including Oxford Brookes Racing.
“For the first year of my Degree Apprenticeship I have been working within our Testing department. I was given the responsibility to co-ordinate GKN Automotive Innovation Centre's technical support to our FS teams and Oxford Brookes (OBR) was one of them," explained Melissa.
"My role this season has been to moderate the communication between the two parties allowing clear planning of testing and updates of progress on the work taking place. Our test rigs have been and are currently very busy, and it was among other things important to align the teams’ ambitions for testing and our availabilities."
"I worked closely with OBR to help run their tests on their inverter, motor & gearbox. This involved inverter software tuning, running the inverter to test their parameters, motor and gearbox assembly and mounting onto the rig. There has been massive involvement from GKN Automotive’s employees in the tests carried out by the FS teams. Everyone was very supportive in their areas of expertise to ensure that the team had a productive time onsite."
"It was such a great insight for me to see the amazing teamwork OBR has, with each team member we had on site playing a clearly defined role but all demonstrating incredible understanding of the project as a whole. For a large team, I found their coordination to be very inspiring. They are very hardworking and determined to succeed: they faced many obstacles and challenges when testing, whether it was trying to work out the software hinderances or tolerances on the mechanical build. Yet I watched them solve each problem strategically despite how complex some of the problems were."
Speaking to one of the OBR team members, Vehicle Controls Lead Tom Maull said: "The OBR electrical team spent several weeks working with GKN Automotive Innovation Centre to get our motors and inverters running for the first time. This involved troubleshooting our encoders, grounding, CAN issues. After hours and hours of troubleshooting, we were able to get our motors spinning for the first time. The collaboration with GKN Automotive was instrumental to us as we worked through the teething issues of developing our very first electric race car."
Melissa enjoyed her time working with OBR. "Working with them taught me effective time management. Watching the team manage both their FS tasks alongside their coursework/ assignments has been very inspiring to me as I have to juggle both work and university myself, which I have found to be challenging," continued Melissa. "The way they handled the process was a learning outcome for me as they all worked together effortlessly tackling each problem as it came. This taught me that I could overcome any challenge I would face whether it be at work or university, the way they were so driven made me feel like there was no problem that had no solution."
"As a result, I have been able to take on bigger responsibilities at work and take initiative in finding the solutions. I have also been able to tackle my university coursework with no procrastinations. OBR FS teams hard work is so evident in their work and their team coordination. It has been a true pleasure working with them."