This week, our news comes from the Aerodynamics team. We hear from its head, Marisa Kurimbokus, given the task of designing the component that everyone sees - the outer

shell.

"The outer shell will largely be covered in solar panels, which means working closely with the Solar team as well as Materials," says Marisa, who at the time of interview had already began work on version 2 of the design, spending the best part of a week on bringing to virtual life the product of discussions held throughout the duration of last term. Usually a composite carbon-fibre material is used for the outer shell because it's lightweight and strong. However, many innovative ideas have arisen during discussions, including the possibility of using fabric, as well as further talk about different possible shapes.

As readers of past newsletters will already know, the aim is to do as well as we possibly can at the next Challenge, and a crucial aspect of this is optimising our vehicle's aerodynamic performance. This means making the outer shell as slender and sleek as possible – at minimum, the canopy must be "about 1 metre wide, to accommodate the driver's shoulders and roll cage," says Marisa. We're also experimenting with reducing the length of this entry from Endeavour's 5 metres to between 3.5 and 4 metres.

Canopy performance is key to the overall aerodynamics of the car The Aerodynamics team have been analysing the performance of our last car, Endeavour, and comparing virtual models and simulations to real performance in wind tunnels

Given the number and quality of ideas being swapped, it's likely that our final model will be very different from design number 2. We aim to have this final version of the shell ready by the end of next term and spend the summer on construction, hopefully with the help of one of our sponsors. We are extremely grateful for their continued support:

Just spent a whole day stripping out all the electronics from Endeavour, and moving the components up to our project room.  With all the last-minute work done during the race in Australia, there's certainly a lot we can do to make the wiring a lot neater and more reliable.  We've not really had the chance to do this yet since Endeavour returned from Australia, but for once we actually have a good amount of time on our hands and should be able to complete a "professional" (by students' standards) job.

Ralph and myself will be working on this over the next 4 or 5 weeks, by which point we hope to have the first wiring loom complete.  No doubt we'll make some mistakes, so our plan is to do some testing and then re-make the loom again.  This will hopefully be sufficiently reliable for us to use for testing over the next year.

Alisdair