After logging more than 15,000 hours of labor, a team of Aggies proved they not only could design and build a Hybrid car in less than nine months, but that it was good enough to be beat teams from other countries.
The Texas A&M University engineering students scored 981 out of a possible 1,000 points in the recent 2009 Formula Hybrid international student design competition recently at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway, said Make McDermott, mechanical engineering associate professor.
"The team learned a process they can apply to any other design project for the rest of their career," McDermott said.
The 26 Aggies took first place out of 30 teams that represented colleges and universities from five different countries, McDermott said.
He said the team spent about 7,000 hours working on the design process, 5,000 hours building the car and another 3,000 hours testing and developing the car even further.
The cars are judged in a series of static and dynamic events including technical inspection, presentation, engineering design, solo performance trials and high-performance track endurance, McDermott said. Judges included engineers from companies such as GM, Toyota, Chrysler, SolidWorks, National Hydrogen Association and others, he said.
The weight of the vehicle and the amount of time the team put into driving test-runs are likely what attributed to the win, said Russell Hall, team project manager and a senior electrical engineering major.
Hall said the team members, made up of an interdisciplinary group of engineering students, had confidence in their 528-pound vehicle by the time they arrived for the competition. The team began the design process in the fall and in January they began building, testing and perfecting the hybrid, said Hall, who graduates Friday.
Managing the team, Hall said, he thinks he learned most about networking, deadlines and communication skills.
"You learn the chain of progress, what all has to happen first in order for something to be done," he said.
Most projects in school are done individually, he said. This project presents a more real-world situation where people from different backgrounds work together on one goal, he said.
McDermott said this was the first year the school has entered in a hybrid competition, though for the past 11 years A&M teams have participated in other car-building races. McDermott said working on a hybrid is good for the students so they practice reducing energy consumption for the competition, which is organized by the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, the Society of Automotive Engineers Inc. and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
The students said their biggest challenges were the technical facets of building the car as well as time management.
Students who've never built a car from scratch have big obstacle to overcome, McDermott said. Also, trying to coordinate ideas, timelines and make effective decisions can sometimes be difficult with large groups, he said.
The students built the car from $60,000 that came from sponsorship for this project, McDermott said. There are a few corporate sponsors that help out every year, as well as companies that provide discounted or free parts for the teams to use, Hall said, adding that A&M's mechanical engineering department helped.
McDermott said he and the students solicited sponsorship support but that most of the larger sponsors were companies that hire Aggie engineering graduates and have been sponsors for multiple years.
Hall said it was fun managing a team to design and build a car.
"It was good to see our product applied and be used and be successful," he said.
Now that the competition is over, the car will serve as a test platform for teams to come, Hall said.
"Future teams will hopefully be able to work with our car to better optimize their designs and procedures," he said.
McDermott said the car will help recruit students to the university and allow for driver training for future projects.
Working with engineering students in different fields allowed Hall to learn far more than his major in school would have taught him, he said.
"It was good to see the other applications of the different engineer disciplines," he said. "It was good to see the other sides of the coin."
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