Institution news
The IIT Bombay Racing team, from the Indian Institute of Technology, has won the IMechE Formula Student award, beating entries from 52 teams from around the globe.
Now in the team's fifth year of competing, the IMechE Formula Student Awards Committee will present IIT Bombay Racing with a cheque for £3,000 in Mumbai. The prize money will help the engineering students to reach the Formula Student Competition being held on 14-17 July 2016.
Rushabh Kapasi, team leader and chief electrical officer of the IIT Bombay Racing team, said: “It feels great to have won the Formula Student Award. It means that we are improving year on year, and our efforts are being appreciated by industry experts. The prize money also helps relieve the financial crunch that every student team faces. In all we are working hard to do well this year at the competition.”
The team is made up of a three-tier structure of more than 70 students who work on designing, manufacturing, testing and helping with the static events of the competition. About 38 of them are sophomore students who are trained in an academic season to work on designing the car for the next year’s entry.
Kapasi said: “A passion for engineering, learning and innovation is what motivates most team members to come join. It is a chance to learn beyond the confines of the classroom and compete against some good universities.”
Rendered image of the IIT Bombay Racing Team electric car, Orca, for their entry to Formula Student 2016
The team will soon unveil its entry for this year’s Formula Student competition, an electric vehicle called Orca. It features a custom battery management system to provide voltage monitoring, logging and temperature measurement for a 6.66kWh battery pack. High power brushless DC motors and regenerative braking have been installed to achieve 0-60kmph in 1.86 seconds. IIT Bombay is also the first Indian team to implement an aluminium honeycomb monocoque chassis for weight reduction and improved rigidity.
Kapsai said that the team is prepared for any challenges that might come ahead of this year’s race, following last season when the team had to repair the motor controller due to water seepage during shipping from India to UK. Kapasi said: “Occuring just 10 days before the competition, it required the complete dedication and ingenuitity of the team to repair it in time and get it up and running.”
The £3,000 cheque will be presented by the chairman of the Western Region Panel of IMechE in April.
Visit the Formula Student website to read more information about the competition.