Student ProjectsNorthwestern Formula Racing - Moving to Four Hub Motors
Project Manager
Rahwa Tesfay
Northwestern Formula Racing
Amount Requested
$5,000
Summary
Northwestern Formula Racing (NFR) is a student-led engineering team that designs, builds, and races a fully electric formula-style vehicle for the international Formula SAE Electric competition. Our project seeks funding to support essential materials and component fabrication for our 2027 season. This campaign will directly empower undergraduate engineers to apply their classroom knowledge to a highly technical, hands-on project that fosters innovation, leadership, and real-world problem-solving.
At the beginning of this year, our team decided to build off of the success and momentum of the previous year (where we had our first driving EV) and move towards a Four Wheel Drive configuration, with hub motors in the front wheels and a single motor in the rear. However, due to electrical integration/reliability issues and limited time, we were unable to have hub motors on during our competition. Even with that setback, we are confident that we will be able to achieve our goal of having four working hub motors for our 2027 season. Four hub motors will provide us complete control of how much power is allocated to each wheel to maximize efficiency and become a faster, more competitive team. Besides performance, this new configuration will provide many new engineering challenges and opportunities, which we believe will greatly develop the skills of the students on our team.
Looking at the issues we faced this year, we would need to source entirely new motors that will make packaging within the wheels much easier and more efficient. Along with this, we will also need to make modifications to our existing custom inverter and rear suspension in order to accomplish our goals. These purchases will allow us to build a car that is not only more reliable, but also provides a greater learning experience for our students. Successfully implementing these changes will allow us to become a more well-established team and reach for top-10 placement at our competition.
Planned Activities/Investments
Our request for this investment is funding to purchase equipment required to implement hub motors in all four wheels. The major expenses for this include the motors themselves as well as the components required to drive said motors. The motors that we are currently looking to purchase, and receive support from the Murphy Society for, are four NOVA 30-50-B4 P50 WK motors. These motors will provide us with 30 kW of peak output power, 80 Nm of peak torque, built-in water cooling, and easier-to-work-with packaging that will help us reach our overall vehicle goals while still meeting rules and wheel size constraints.
Other expenses include, but are not limited to, components for the custom inverters, gearboxes, cooling tubes and pumps, and high-voltage wiring.
Impact
Northwestern Formula Racing is a wonderful resource for student engineers and anyone interested in engineering, allowing them to apply what they've learned in the classroom to a real-world project. Everyone is welcome, and students are able to experience the entire design cycle - from initial ideation to manufacturing and testing, and finally to assess areas of improvement. Additionally, NFR provides students with experience working in a collaborative environment that relies on close communication, developing their interpersonal skills as well as technical. Aside from engineering, our team also has an operations division focused on financial and outreach tasks. Students can learn skills in contacting sponsors and managing team budgets. This allows engineering students an opportunity to grow their non-technical skills, as well as inviting non-technical students to join.
This past year we’ve cultivated a group of around 60 students who regularly contribute to our club. Throughout the year, we ask our members for feedback on their development and experience, ensuring we're helping them grow their skills. We can see the impact the club has had in the work that our members complete. From machined components to student-designed PCBs, it’s easy to see how the level of quality improves as students progress through the club.
There are countless stories of members who talk at length during interviews about the work they’ve accomplished at NFR.
Deliverables
In order to achieve our goal of a four-hub motor design, there are several major deliverables we need to achieve. In order to power the motors, we will need to design and build new custom inverters that will take power from our high-voltage battery and deliver it to the motors. These inverters will be a modified version of the front inverter we had for our previous vehicle’s front hub motor setup, as we will be able to iterate and adjust our approach based on the successes and challenges we faced this past year. We aim to have working inverters in mid-February 2027.
We will also need to modify the rear suspension so that it will be able to support the inboard motors. This will require a custom gearbox for each wheel along with wheel uprights that are able to support the mounting of these wheels. We aim to have these designs manufactured and ready to put onto the car by our rolling chassis deadline of January 16th, 2027.
Finally, we will need to redesign our cooling and wiring system in order to properly deliver power and coolant to all four motors. Since we are already coming from a setup with front wheel hub motors, we only need to make modifications to the rear of our car. There will also be opportunities to simplify and optimize our routing to reduce the amount of materials needed.
Sustainability
In addition to funding from the Murphy Society, we are supported by a large number of sponsors with whom we keep close ties. These sponsors often assist the team with both monetary and in-kind donations, and have given us feedback on our designs. We are also supported by donations from alumni and families, last year raising $16,000 during our Catalyzer campaign. We keep close connections with our alumni who provide generous support in knowledge as well as finances. The support from donations and sponsors comprises a large portion of our team's finances and supply of materials.
In addition to our current support, we have ambitions to pursue additional sponsorship opportunities, as well as expand our alumni and family outreach. We have an ongoing newsletter about our progress and plans, and have intentions to reach out to Northwestern magazines and newspapers for featured segments to draw further attention and support. The success of the last 2 years provides us an opportunity to communicate the major strides we’ve made and pursue more elusive sponsorships.
We hope that support from the Murphy Society will allow us to pursue even more technically impressive and performant designs, and this will continue to make us more desirable for sponsors and donors.
Previous Project
Last year, we did receive support from the Murphy Society to help us implement front-wheel hub motors for the first time in our team’s history. While we weren’t able to successfully add these motors to our car, we made major improvements to various subsystems of our vehicle that we expect to significantly improve our results at our competition.
We were able to improve our suspension geometry to significantly decrease the steering effort of our vehicle, change our high-voltage battery sizing and how we distribute power to increase speed and acceleration, improve telemetry so that we can gather meaningful data from test drives, and improve ergonomics to allow for a comfortable and smooth ride. Along with these technical improvements, we were able to improve member retention with 40+ members, the majority of whom joined the team for the first time last year, coming back in the fall.
Budget Overview
- Hub motors: NOVA 30-50-B4 P50 WK motors ($9275) - the motors we currently plan to utilize for our four-wheel drive system
Total Budget Amount: $9,275
Faculty Adviser/Department
Michael Beltran/McCormick School of Engineering