Cambridge University Eco Racing
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- Asia
- Europe
- Pacific
Country
- Australia
- Hong Kong
- United Kingdom
Product
- SOLIDWORKS Education Edition
Tech Stack
- 3D Design Software
- Visualization Tools
- Prototyping Tools
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Brand Awareness
- Customer Satisfaction
- Environmental Impact Reduction
- Innovation Output
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
- Functional Applications - Product Lifecycle Management Systems (PLM)
- Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems
Applicable Industries
- Automotive
- Education
- Renewable Energy
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
- Quality Assurance
- Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
- Digital Twin
- Predictive Maintenance
- Public Warning & Emergency Response
- Remote Collaboration
- Virtual Prototyping & Product Testing
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
- Training
About The Customer
CUER is a group of 60 students at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom who build and race solar-powered vehicles. Since its founding in 2007, CUER has grown to become the top U.K. developer of solar-powered vehicle technologies and a leading contender to win the 2013 World Solar Challenge. While competition drives CUER’s research and development efforts, the team’s mission is to inspire as well as innovate. The team showcases cutting-edge sustainable engineering and demonstrates the incredible potential of electric vehicle technologies. By designing a car to run on solar power alone, CUER is driving the step changes in vehicle efficiency and developing new technologies that make solar cars functional, practical, and desirable.
The Challenge
Establish and grow a competitive solar car racing team at Cambridge University to compete for the top award at the World Solar Challenge and demonstrate the incredible potential of solar-powered electric vehicles.
The Solution
Implement SOLIDWORKS Education Edition solutions to spur solar car development, facilitate team collaboration and communication, and advance team growth and competitiveness. CUER chose SOLIDWORKS® Education Edition design software for designing, prototyping, and manufacturing components for its cars. The software provides visualization and communication tools for collaboration among the technical teams—mechanical, electrical, aerodynamics, and composites—and for interaction with the business team. Using SOLIDWORKS Education Edition, CUER developed vehicles that competed in the World Solar Challenge in 2009 and 2011. The team learned important lessons, including an assessment of the vehicles developed by more experienced corporate and academic teams. The software has allowed CUER to build upon the work of past teams to grow, improve, and become more competitive.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Remote Monitoring & Predictive Maintenance App for a Solar Energy System
The maintenance & tracking of various modules was an overhead for the customer due to the huge labor costs involved. Being an advanced solar solutions provider, they wanted to ensure early detection of issues and provide the best-in-class customer experience. Hence they wanted to automate the whole process.
Case Study
Vestas: Turning Climate into Capital with Big Data
Making wind a reliable source of energy depends greatly on the placement of the wind turbines used to produce electricity. Turbulence is a significant factor as it strains turbine components, making them more likely to fail. Vestas wanted to pinpoint the optimal location for wind turbines to maximize power generation and reduce energy costs.
Case Study
Siemens Wind Power
Wind provides clean, renewable energy. The core concept is simple: wind turbines spin blades to generate power. However, today's systems are anything but simple. Modern wind turbines have blades that sweep a 120 meter circle, cost more than 1 million dollars and generate multiple megawatts of power. Each turbine may include up to 1,000 sensors and actuators – integrating strain gages, bearing monitors and power conditioning technology. The turbine can control blade speed and power generation by altering the blade pitch and power extraction. Controlling the turbine is a sophisticated job requiring many cooperating processors closing high-speed loops and implementing intelligent monitoring and optimization algorithms. But the real challenge is integrating these turbines so that they work together. A wind farm may include hundreds of turbines. They are often installed in difficult-to-access locations at sea. The farm must implement a fundamentally and truly distributed control system. Like all power systems, the goal of the farm is to match generation to load. A farm with hundreds of turbines must optimize that load by balancing the loading and generation across a wide geography. Wind, of course, is dynamic. Almost every picture of a wind farm shows a calm sea and a setting sun. But things get challenging when a storm goes through the wind farm. In a storm, the control system must decide how to take energy out of gusts to generate constant power. It must intelligently balance load across many turbines. And a critical consideration is the loading and potential damage to a half-billion-dollar installed asset. This is no environment for a slow or undependable control system. Reliability and performance are crucial.
Case Study
Remote Monitoring and Control for a Windmill Generator
As concerns over global warming continue to grow, green technologies are becoming increasingly popular. Wind turbine companies provide an excellent alternative to burning fossil fuels by harnessing kinetic energy from the wind and converting it into electricity. A typical wind farm may include over 80 wind turbines so efficient and reliable networks to manage and control these installations are imperative. Each wind turbine includes a generator and a variety of serial components such as a water cooler, high voltage transformer, ultrasonic wind sensors, yaw gear, blade bearing, pitch cylinder, and hub controller. All of these components are controlled by a PLC and communicate with the ground host. Due to the total integration of these devices into an Ethernet network, one of our customers in the wind turbine industry needed a serial-to-Ethernet solution that can operate reliably for years without interruption.
Case Study
Integral Plant Maintenance
Mercedes-Benz and his partner GAZ chose Siemens to be its maintenance partner at a new engine plant in Yaroslavl, Russia. The new plant offers a capacity to manufacture diesel engines for the Russian market, for locally produced Sprinter Classic. In addition to engines for the local market, the Yaroslavl plant will also produce spare parts. Mercedes-Benz Russia and his partner needed a service partner in order to ensure the operation of these lines in a maintenance partnership arrangement. The challenges included coordinating the entire maintenance management operation, in particular inspections, corrective and predictive maintenance activities, and the optimizing spare parts management. Siemens developed a customized maintenance solution that includes all electronic and mechanical maintenance activities (Integral Plant Maintenance).
