Authors: Thomas Holemans, student, campus Groep T Leuven, KU Leuven, Kristof Borgions, student, campus Groep T Leuven, KU Leuven, Maarten Vanierschot, Assistant professor, campus Groep T Leuven, KU Leuven and Colinda Goormans-Francke, Head Academic Products and Applications, NUMECA International.
Every 2 years competitors from around the world set out on a grueling race across the Australian outback: the World Solar Challenge. The competing solar-powered cars are built by some of the brightest young minds on the planet. Student teams from all over the world, push the limits of technological innovation by engineering and building a vehicle with their own hands, powered only by the sun. The competition is designed to promote research on solar-powered cars.
The Belgian team Agoria won last year’s race with their car called BluePoint. BluePoint is the result of years of research by different teams of thesis students from KU Leuven.
One of the most important objectives of solar-powered car development is to minimize power consumption by reducing drag. To find the optimum design within the limits of the competition, the Agoria Solar Team ran many simulations using OMNIS™, and were able to make a large variety of design changes thanks to its quick and easy, yet high-quality mesh production.