Here is all you need to know about Team HammerHead — Pakistan’s pioneering team at Shell Eco-Marathon
Investing in energy efficiency solutions especially for our transportation needs is the need of the hour. For this purpose many platforms organize events to encourage the youth to work on innovative ideas.
One such event is the Shell Eco-Marathon (SEM). As the name hints, this is an international energy efficiency competition sponsored by Shell and it has been underway for the past thirty-five years. The competitions are held in various countries around the world.
The goal of the competition is to encourage students to build the most fuel efficient car. Participants from around the globe compete in two vehicle categories based on the shape of the vehicles, called the Urban and the Prototype Concept. There is a further classification that is based on the power source such as if the battery-electric, hydrogen fuel, and internal combustion. Prizes are awarded separately for each vehicle class and energy category. The pinnacle of the competition is the Shell Eco-marathon Drivers’ World Championship, where the most energy efficient Urban Concept vehicles compete in a race with a limited amount of energy.
Pakistani students from the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute also participate in this competition and have made a mark for themselves. Known as the Team HammerHead, this student run SEM team was founded in 2009 and annually participates in the prototype battery electric category. They were also the first ones from the country to participate in such an international competition. Later they were followed by multiple Pakistani teams who achieved distinctions in their respective events.
The team holds the top three highest mileages achieved by any Pakistani team at the Shell Eco-Marathon. Their past titles include:
* Top 6 achieving a mileage of 211 km/kWh (2014).
* Top 6 with an unbroken Pakistani record mileage of 311 km/kWh (2017).
* Shell Dream Car Challenge Winner for design innovation on steering systems — adding a tilting mechanism to make more efficient turns at high speed (2015).
Team HammerHead includes:
* Muhammad Afaq (Team Captain) — Brings the team together and ensures project completion.
* Muhammad Junaid Javed (Team Manager) — Takes care of all internal and external affairs.
* Roshan Rehman (Communications Manager) — Handles all of our campaigns.
* Muhammad Zikriya (Operations Manager) — Looks after internal operations.
* Danish Sajjad (Technical Head) — Responsible for the technical systems in the car.
* Ayesha (Electrical Head) — Responsible for the electric system of the car.
* Abdullah Ibrar — Senior Member.
* Sheikh Abdul Majid — Senior Member.
* Jibran Mughal — Senior Member.
This year like everything else that has been impacted by the ongoing pandemic, SEM went virtual as well and according to the team this took away most of the technical competing aspects, including mileage. Despite this the team was able to successfully develop the country’s first ever carbon fibre monocoque car chassis.
Talking to Mashable Pakistan the team shared that, “Weighing in at just 23kg, it is lighter than the best teams at the competition who currently weighs in at around 25kg. It is just shy of the world record of 20kg and raises our mileage to 650 km/kWh.”
Explaining for the layman they further shared; “A monocoque frame is a design that combines the chassis (lower part), to which the engine and wheels are attached, with the shell (body of the car) achieving a greater strength to weight ratio. Our current design incorporates a monocoque frame design constructed with a composite carbon material reducing its weight to nearly half of our previous mild steel design’s 40kg. With the shape of our new design, were also able to decrease our coefficient of drag to about 0.12 bringing us closer to the world record of 0.075. This design was a collective effort from all of our team.”
This year, Team HammerHead also won Shell’s ‘Race for Your Money’ challenge, a local idea competition with the winning team securing a sponsorship deal. They developed a new idea for enhancing fuel efficiency using Artificial Neural Networks — Deep Learning to predict faults and provide the driver with real time feedback of component conditions, optimum driving speeds, and optimum racing lines.
Focused on continuing to improve their design keeping in mind the manufacturing capabilities available in the country, the team plans on replacing most of the metallic components of the car chassis with carbon fibre parts to further cut back on the weight that will help achieve better mileage. They have their eyes set on the goal of becoming the champions at the Shell Eco-Marathon 2021.
Originally published at https://pk.mashable.com on August 25, 2020.
