Design Process

The Problem

The following problem statement was given to us by Electric Blue Motors:

The team has been tasked to design a new motor controller for electric vehicles as part of the senior design capstone class [EE 486] at Northern Arizona University. This project started last year when preliminary research began on motor controls in the junior level design class [EE 386]. The research culminated into a small prototype circuit that drove a 12 Volt DC motor running at a nominal current of 33 milliamps. This year, the team hopes to build a much larger scale version of the prototype that was created in EE386. The new motor controller the team will design will power a DC brush motor at 160 volts and over 500 amps. In order to accurately test the motor controller on-road conditions, a vehicle will be converted to electric. The test vehicle is a 1994 Land Rover, Range Rover Classic that will give us the feedback needed to build a reliable and safe product.

The major milestone for the team regarding this step was when we received the problem for Electric Blue Motors, indicating the start of our senior capstone project.