Dynamis PRC: Pushing Innovation in Electronics and Performance
Introduction
Dynamis PRC is the Formula Student team of the Politecnico di Milano. Founded in 2003, the team has designed and built a racing prototype every year since. In 2021, the team decided to transition from the combustion category to the electric category, and in 2022, they built their first autonomous vehicle. The 2024 season is focused on increasing the vehicle’s performance to close the gap with top-level teams that have years of experience in the electric category.
For Dynamis PRC, innovation means daring to reimagine and rebuild assemblies when realizing they could greatly benefit from a new concept. The team understands that each new design will bring numerous challenges, which also present unique opportunities for growth and learning. This was also true for the Electronics Department. With the knowledge gained in past seasons, nearly everything was redesigned to consolidate and simplify every aspect of hardware and software.
The DP15 season saw a major revolution in the electronics system: the entire low-voltage system was redesigned to adapt solely to 24V and 48V domains, eliminating the 12V and 20V domains present in DP14. This led to the standardization and simplification of the PCB hardware and the necessity to redesign most of the boards.
Eurocircuits is a fundamental sponsor for the team, and we can always rely on the high quality of their PCBs, the possibility to have all the information on the stack-up, and to have access to matched impedance technology.
Vehicle Control Unit
One of the major challenges for the electronics department has been trying to reduce the footprint of the electronic control unit boards, condensing into one single 81 x 51 mm^2 board, the functionality of two boards from the previous year. The DP15 VCU has control over the tractive system power-on, communication with the inverter, torque vectoring algorithm, and two completely new features: the real-time radio telemetry and the Ethernet communication with the new driverless PC, a Jetson NVIDIA. The hardware implementation of these two modules has been possible only thanks to the ability to match the PCB trace impedances provided by Eurocircuits.
BMS Slave
The Battery Management System is responsible for the monitoring and safety of the battery pack and the cells within. Our system employs a distributed topology, with a single control unit, the BMS Master, and many BMS Slaves. Their job is to read cells’ voltage and temperature and to perform the balancing of the cells to keep their voltages as close as possible to each other. This is key to maximizing the energy stored in the battery pack during the charging process and helps maintain uniform aging of the cells.
These boards have been printed exactly as in the past season, and thanks to the assembly service provided by Eurocircuits, we can be sure on the reliability of these fundamental boards.
Tractive System Active Sense
This board is a simplification of last year’s model. It helps simplify a lot the wiring harness of the inverter container; it detects high voltage on the DC Link of the inverters as required by the competition rules. Now it is equipped with a microcontroller that allows the inverter activation commanded by the VCU.
For more information please visit the Dynamis PRC website.
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