People :: ECE 445 - Senior Design Laboratory

People

TA Office Hours

Held weekly in the senior design lab (ECEB 2070/2072). NOTE:

Blue names are office hours held online via zoom.

Names highlighted in orange are additional office hours available up to the due date of the soldering assignment.

There are no office hours during the weeks of board reviews or final demos.

Chat Room

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Spring 2024 Instructors

Name Area
Prof. Arne Fliflet (Instructor)
3056
afliflet@illinois.edu		 microwave generation and applications
Prof. Viktor Gruev (Instructor)

vgruev@illinois.edu
Prof. Rakesh Kumar (Instructor)

rakeshk@illinois.edu
Prof. Olga Mironenko (Instructor)

olgamiro@illinois.edu
Prof. Michael Oelze (Instructor)
ECEB 2056
oelze@illinois.edu		 Biomedical Imaging, Acoustics, Nondestructive Testing
Prof. Jonathon Schuh (Instructor)
4066 ECEB
schuh4@illinois.edu		 Computational Physics, Electromechanics, Fluid Mechanics, Energy Storage, Tribology
Prof. Victoria Shao (Instructor)

yangshao@illinois.edu
Nikhil Arora (TA)

na32@illinois.edu		 Mechanical Design, Automotive Technologies, Additive Manufacturing
Sainath Barbhai (TA)

barbhai2@illinois.edu		 Design Engineering, Finite Element Method, Sensors and Actuators
Zutai Chen (TA)

zutaic2@illinois.edu
Vishal Dayalan (TA)

vishald2@illinois.edu		 Data Science and Analytics, Mechanical Design, CAD, Simulation, System Design, Robotics and Product Development
Luoyan Li (TA)

luoyanl2@illinois.edu		 machine learning, hardware acceleration
Zicheng Ma (TA)

zicheng5@illinois.edu		 Cloud computing, Database systems
Abhisheka Mathur Sekar (TA)

am113@illinois.edu		 Mechanical Engineering, Design, CAD Modelling and Simulation, Fluid Mechanics, MRI, Human centric designs
David Null (TA)

null2@illinois.edu		 Robotics, Computer Vision, Navigation, Coordinated Systems, Control Systems.
Jason Paximadas (TA)

jop2@illinois.edu		 Power electronics, control, and instrumentation
Sanjana Pingali (TA)

pingali4@illinois.edu		 Machine Learning Systems
Matthew Qi (TA)

mqi6@illinois.edu		 Power Electronics
Nithin Balaji Shanthini Praveena Purushothaman (TA)

ns49@illinois.edu		 My area of interest include Mechanical Design, Design Analysis, Supply Chain(Circular), Industry 4.0, Data Science and RPA.
Selva Subramaniam (TA)

ss170@illinois.edu
Koushik Udayachandran (TA)

koushik3@illinois.edu		 Unmanned aerial vehicles. Risk assesment. Autonomous underwater vehicles . Aircraft design. Systems engineering and integration . Flight testing
Surya Vasanth (TA)

vasanth4@illinois.edu		 Data Science and Analytics, Internet of Things, Human Centric Design
Angquan Yu (TA)

angquan2@illinois.edu
Douglas Yu (TA)

zeduoyu2@illinois.edu		 Hardware Design, Computer Architecture, AI
Jason Zhang (TA)

zekaiz2@illinois.edu		 AR, Robot and human interactions
Jialiang Zhang (TA)
CSL 403
jz23@illinois.edu		 Hardware Systems, Computer Architecture
Tianxiang Zheng (TA)

tz32@illinois.edu		 FPGA hls and mlir; Chronic signal processing; robotics and control; 3D printing;

Other Important People

https://ece.illinois.edu/about/directory/staff

Active Cell Balancing for Solar Vehicle Battery Pack

Tara D'Souza, John Han, Rohan Kamatar

Featured Project

# Problem

Illini Solar Car (ISC) utilizes lithium ion battery packs with 28 series modules of 15 parallel cells each. In order to ensure safe operation, each battery cell must remain in its safe voltage operating range (2.5 - 4.2 V). Currently, all modules charge and discharge simultaneously. If any single module reaches 4.2V while charging, or 2.5V while discharging, the car must stop charging or discharging, respectively. During normal use, it is natural for the modules to become unbalanced. As the pack grows more unbalanced, the capacity of the entire battery pack decreases as it can only charge and discharge to the range of the lowest capacity module. An actively balanced battery box would ensure that we utilize all possible charge during the race, up to 5% more charge based on previous calculations.

# Solution Overview

We will implement active balancing which will redistribute charge in order to fully utilize the capacity of every module. This system will be verified within a test battery box so that it can be incorporated into future solar vehicles.

Solution Components:

- Test Battery Box (Hardware): The test battery box provides an interface to test new battery management circuitry and active balancing.

- Battery Sensors (Hardware): The current battery sensors for ISC do not include hardware necessary for active balancing. The revised PCB will include the active balancing components proposed below while also including voltage and temperature sensing for each cell.

- Active Balancing Circuit (Hardware): The active balancing circuit includes a switching regulator IC, transformers, and the cell voltage monitors.

- BMS Test firmware (Software): The Battery Management System requires new firmware to control and test active balancing.

# Criterion for Success

- Charge can be redistributed from one module to another during discharge and charge, to be demonstrated by collected data of cell voltages over time.

- BMS can control balancing.

- The battery pack should always be kept within safe operating conditions.

- Test battery box provides a safe and usable platform for future tests.