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MIT Motorsports Formula SAE Electric Race Car

Formula SAE is a student design competition organized by SAE International, formerly

known as the Society of Automotive Engineers. Conceived of in 1978 at the University of

Houston, the first organized competition was held at the University of Texas at Austin in

1981 and included only 6 teams. Since then it’s grown into a major event including well

over 100 teams from all over the world.

The MIT Formula SAE team was started by two aspiring young freshmen in 2001 and

has since grown into the current team of about 30 students. The team has garnered recent

national recognition with two back-to-back, top-10 finishes at FSAE West in California.

In 2013 a new vehicle class was introduced called Formula SAE Electric. The MIT

Motorsports team decided to change direction and design an electric vehicle to compete in

the first Formula SAE Electric competition in the US – held in Lincoln, NE last year. The

decision and hard work paid-off with a 16th place finish out of over 120 teams at the FSAE

competition in Michigan.

During development of the Electric Vehicle, the MIT team faced many challenges

including testing and optimizing their new electric motor powered drive train. They

needed to characterize their motors and

turned to the experts at Interface for help

developing an electric motor test stand.

After consulting with an Interface

application engineer, the HRDT (High

Resolution Digital Torque Transducer)

with integrated couplings was selected as

the torque transducer of choice for their

rigorous testing program. Advantages of

the HRDT were compact installation, high

accuracy and large overload capability.

Figure 1. http://web.mit.edu/fsae/index.html