Solar Boat race results

http://www.mwdh2o.com/mwdh2o/pages/education/solar_cup_01.html

We didn't have the fastest boat in the sprint but it lasted the endurance race. Most others ran out of power and had to be towed across the finish line

We came in 15th place out of 28
(Chino Hills High School)

Great. What would you do differently next time? Was it the design, speed the motor was going, etc?

I know with electric wheelchairs running flat out really sucks power and going 75% of top speed gives you the best speed vs run time per a charge. In some cases some wheelchairs will throttle back or thermal roll back if they start to get warm to protect the speed controller and motors and of course as motors heat up they become less efficient and as batteries are taxed, their voltage starts to drop too causing less performance.

Probably the motor itself. We used a 24volt Motorguide Trolling motor that gave abuut 80 pounds of thrust. The speed control is fully variable

The boats were mostly the same design. The differences were the motors used, battery pack, and configeration of the solar panels.

What would you do differently? Do you have some speed results so you can test your next design, assuming you are going to try it again?

Sorry, I love this kind of stuff. One reason I would sit in the cloudy weather and get burned watching nascar qualifying twice and practice. Or watch the recap of a race after it is ran to see how the winner gets to the front.

I know from what i have seen on the discovery channel, propeller design alone plays a great role as some designs generated air pockets which reduce thrust. I think some show that had students making water robots or ice breakers, they use a varible pitch propeller that could go from forward, nutral and reverse all while turning the same speed.