IFEC 2019 final round – E-Driver for a Bicycle

IFEC 2019
IEEE International Future Energy Challenge

E-Driver for a Bicycle

We won third place!!!!!!

Prof. Yu-Chen Liu from National Ilan University led the ECIE team to participate the “International Future Energy Challenge” (IFEC) sponsored by the US National Energy Administration. This competition has been held since 2001. The first competition was limited to well-known universities in North America. Due to the enthusiastic response, from the second competition in 2003 and on, participation was extended to universities around the world to participate. In the past, the competition focused on the design of power electronic converters. This year’s competition was held from July 29 to July 31, 2019 at the Electrical Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The bicycle driver was the competition theme, combined with power electronics and a motor driver design, which was more challenging than previous years.

The students designed a high-performance and high-power density motor driver for the electric DC brushless motor. The competition verifies the reliability, thermal simulation, drive motor performance, and the actual installation of the designed product. These requirements for the electric bicycle drive are close to the industry standard requirements. Prof. Liu said that this topic requires multiple professional fields. Therefore, Prof. Zong-hong Lin from the mechanical department, was invited to serve as the director of the organization and cooling, and the Prof. Katherine A. Kim from National Taiwan University, and the Prof. Huang-Jen Chiu from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, were also invited. The faculty advisors gave the students guidance to participate in the competition and have good exchanges with other schools. The school’s student team included Pao-Hsiang Chang, Ta-Nien Sun, Ching-Ju Cheng, He-Hsiang Hsu, Yu-Chen Chun, Bo-Ruei Ciou, I-Hsun Chen, and Xiusen Zheng. They spent more than a year researching and developing, from basic theory to project realization, their theoretical and practical abilities. A fairly basic foundation, whether it is required for future jobs or for further studies, is very useful.

The competition consisted of nine countries from Germany, the United States, South Korea, Brazil, Serbia, the United Arab Emirates, India, China, and Taiwan. The competition was divided into two phases: written review and oral progress report. The 20 university teams from 9 countries entered the preliminary round through the first stage of the written screening, and conducted the second stage oral progress report. Finally, 10 university teams from 7 countries were selected to enter the finals. After three days of competition, the ECIE team from NIU won the third place in the international competition, which was enough to show that the university’s power electronics and green energy professional technical standards have been keeping pace with the world’s leading universities.

News link: https://www.engr.wisc.edu

College link: https://www.niu.edu.tw