WinDTUrbine from DTU won this year’s
Racing Aeolus competition, and thus successfully defended last year’s Danish victory. At the same time, it achieved a world record in driving directly against the wind.
DTU’s wind-powered mechanical vehicle winDTUrbine hurtled along when it was recently in Den Helder, the Netherlands, to defend the Danish colours in competition with seven other teams from Germany, Turkey, the Netherlands, and Canada. As defending champion from 2015, the DTU students were keen to defend their first place in driving a wind-powered mechanical vehicle against the wind.
“The arrangement here at DTU is that new students take over the vehicle each year. This means that we have to learn a lot of new things all at once initially, but it’s really interesting. You get to apply your theoretical knowledge to real practical problems, which gives you a completely different grasp of what you are learning,” says Joakim Sehested from winDTUrbine.
This was ninth Racing Aeolus event, and the third time that DTU has taken home the cup, making it the university that has won most among all the competing teams. On this occasion, winDTUrbine even managed to break the magical limit of 100 per cent of the wind speed, as the car achieved a speed of 101.8 per cent of the wind speed.
This means that the black vehicle was propelled forwards faster than the speed of the headwind. This was the first time in the history of the contest, and it resulted in a prize from the Dutch energy research institution ECN (Energy research Centre of the Netherlands), while it also meant that the trophy could once again be taken back to DTU.
This year, the winning team was made up of Joachim Holm Knudsen and Joakim Sehested Sie from Mechanical Engineering, and Mathias Kirk from Environmental Engineering.
“Of course we’ll have a new team next year, but I think that DTU will once again take home the Racing Aeolus Den Helder Cup. We have a really good car, which we know really well, and that is our strength,” says Joakim Sehested.