Students’ winning formula pays off

A TEAM of six University of KwaZulu-Natal mechanical engineering students who created an award-winning solar-powered car graduated with BSc Engineering degrees last week.

The team included Damien Raghubeer, Matthew Woods, Nicholas Witteveen, Peter Sinclair, Saien Rugdeo and Shuvay Singh.

The proud graduates worked on the 2014 solar car, iKlwa, which came first in the South African category and third overall in the epic 2014 Pretoria to Cape Town eight-day Solar Car Challenge, covering a distance of 2 418.3km and racing against teams from all around the world.

The UKZN team has since signed up to participate in the 2015 World Solar Car Challenge, scheduled to take place in Australia later this year.

Hulamin, the major sponsors of Iklwa, have pledged a further R1-million to send the team to Australia as they were so impressed with the students’ performance last year. It will be the first time an African team has entered this international event.

Other engineering students to graduate, and who worked on the 2014 Solar Car, include Jediael Krishnasamy (electronic engineering), Kevashen Govender (electronic engineering), Kylen Naidoo (electronic engineering) and Samith Kamal (computer engineering).

Raghubeer said his four-year mechanical engineering degree had been a lot of work but a good experience. Currently a training engineer at South African Breweries, he found that once he had adapted to the workload of the degree he enjoyed it and was thankful for the experience.

Fellow graduate, Woods, who found his time studying mechanical engineering extremely rewarding, has decided to pursue his masters degree this year.

Sinclair has moved to Switzerland, where he is working on his masters at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. He is designing tooling for a new small wheel for the ATLAS experiment.

‘iKlwa’ is isiZulu for ‘a short and agile spear’. The car was named iKlwa because like a spear it pierces the air with its aerodynamic design, being light, nimble and agile. It represents an innovative and efficient design, promoting green energy for the future, which is rich in local skill and creativity.

The car – lightweight yet rigid and safe, with a fully carbon-composite monocoque chassis – has six square metres of silicon solar panels to harness energy from the sun, which is stored in 21kg lithium ion batteries.

iKlwa conforms to FIA and World Solar Challenge regulations.