Development of a Vehicle Control Unit for an electric racing motorcycle

In today world the environmental problem starts to become an everyday topic which is trying to afford in all related field, even in Motorsport where it becomes every day more important, as witnessed by the recent introduced competition such as Formula E and Moto E. This revolution is carried forward also in university field, with Formula SAE and MotoStudent competition. The last one consists of producing a motorbike prototype with a full electric powertrain, with the final objective to participate at the final event in the Motorland of Aragon. 2WheelsPoliTO has participated from the first edition in 2010 in the petrol category and for the first time in his history tried to take part in the electric one with his prototype called 2WPE23. The main goal of this thesis is to integrate the component of the E-powertrain with the other sensors and ECUs. To reach this objective, it has been necessary to manage all the system with a custom Vehicle Control Unit (VCU) which has to provide a reliable control based on the overall status of the bike. Regulation analysis was the starting point of the design, in order to take note of all design constraint and necessary functionality to implement. Afterwards, it has been performed the choosing of electric and electronic components which led the drawing of the electric scheme of the motorbike. During this phase the definition of all requirements necessary for the hardware design of the VCU was performed. Once defined the top-level architecture, choosing the number and typologies of input and output and the main circuital block, it has been searched the necessary components able to carry out the required functions, also considering market availability. The Arduino Portenta H7 was chosen as microcontroller to manage the board, thanks to its high number of available pins and its calculation power. After that, it was possible to drawing the schematic circuit with the program Altium Designer, defining them in a hierarchy architecture, using a top-down approach. Hardware layout was the last operation necessary to complete the design, in which were performed many considerations regarding component placement, current and board dimension. The second part of the thesis was more practical and focused on the hardware assembly made at the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication of the Politecnico where the final product was tested with a simple version of the firmware to check the correct working of all its functionalities. During this test it was noticed some layout errors that led to the production of a second VCU version, which was the final one. Then, based on the motorbike CAD, it was possible to draw the constructive scheme of the cabling, which was built in order to testing all the system together. The final phase was concerned in realizing the control firmware to implement the functionality described in the requirements. At this stage it was possible to test all the system on the bike, in order to change various parameters based on data collected on the track. The thesis was made in collaboration with Bylogix, an Italian company specialized in the automotive sector which provided support, means and material necessary to develop the VCU and the cabling of the prototype. This work has permitted 2WP to obtain his first electric prototype, creating the necessary know-how that will be used for the development of future bike, knowing what solution to avoid and what optimization can be made to afford this challenge in a better way in the next competitions.