Following months of preparation and a number of trials, the ECN team was declared the winner of the Racing Aeolus design competition on Saturday 23 August. It was already clear that the team from the University of Stuttgart had built the fastest wind-powered vehicle (WPV), but ECN gained a well-deserved second place in the race. Our team can thus look back on a very successful competition with their ECN Impulse, the cart that runs against the wind.
Beside a high dike and the North Sea, the international teams raced their home-made WPVs against the wind over a more than one-kilometre long track. On Thursday the Impulse performed at its best, reaching an average speed of 18 km/h and a maximum speed of 22 km/h, travelling alongside the dike with a wind speed of 5-6 on the Beaufort scale. With a time of 3 minutes 47 seconds the ECN Impulse came in third place on this first day of the competition, after the Stuttgart and Risø teams (3:13 and 3:37 respectively).
Start
There was a considerable wait for the starting signal on Thursday morning, but the futuristic-looking WPVs attracted a lot of attention from day-trippers and naval personnel. The Danish, Greek, German and Dutch teams were still tinkering with their vehicles right up to the last minute. Professor Gustav Winkler of Flensburg University of Applied Sciences was convinced that no-one could possibly go faster than half the wind speed. “I’ll explain later this evening”, he announced at the start of the event. “And if anyone does manage to do so, I’ll give away a cash prize!”
Gerard Broers, designer of the ECN Impulse racing car (left), recieves the Award for best Design. Leo Machielse, project manager ECN Wind Energy (middle) and Albert Moens, delegate of the Province Noord-Holland, were delighted with the victory of ECN.
Big and small
Bert Janssen, chairman of the Racing Aeolus judging panel, said: “We already know it’s possible to drive against the wind: at ECN school-children in the last year of primary school make little models that demonstrate this. However, it was uncertain if we could ride against a headwind on a large scale. We first needed to calculate whether this was possible, and it turned out that it was.” Before being allowed to take part in the race, the WPVs were subjected to extensive tests: the teams had to prove, among other things, that their vehicles would not tip over in a 18 m/s wind, and the rotor area had to be no more than 4 square metres.
There were interesting differences between the WPVs. Of the six wind vehicles, only one had electric transmission; the others had a mechanical system. Some had a continuously variable transmission, and a couple had derailleur gears. The ECN Impulse was the only one with an eye-catching yellow hard shell. What united all the teams, however, was their in-depth knowledge of aerodynamics. “You need to be very good at that to meet the challenge of riding against the wind using that very same wind while not generating too much resistance”, Janssen explains.
Enthousiastic
Racing Aeolus was first announced at the major European wind energy conference in Milan, EWEC 2007. No less than nine contestants enrolled, but unfortunately three dropped out, including Delft University of Technology, making ECN the only Dutch competitor. The work was done by the units Wind Energy and E&S. “It wasn’t easy to get people going, because of the pressure of their 'normal' work, but once we got started they were unstoppable”, said ECN project manager Leo Machielse.
Racing Aeolus is to become an annual event. Enrolment for next year has begun, and the first contestants have already enrolled from India and South Africa. The first race was an initiative linked directly with the Tall Ships Race 2008 and was supported by the Province of North Holland. More information on the next Racing Aeolus can be obtained from ATO-NH in Den Helder.
Information:
More information on Racing Aeolus and the organization of the next race can be obtained from ATO-NH on their web site, www.ato-nh.nl.
