7/10/2012 By Meredith Staub
Written by By Meredith Staub
“We’re definitely looking to get back there,” said senior Steve Braun, one of the team members who worked on the Chainless Challenge for the Fall 2011 Senior Design Class (ME 470).
The Chainless Challenge is sponsored by Parker Hannifin, a manufacturer of motion control products. It is a competition between 11 universities (including four Big Ten schools) to build the most efficient bicycle using hydraulic power rather than chains. Each bicycle is then judged according to its performance in a 100-yard sprint race, its design ingenuity and novelty, its reliability and safety, its manufacturability and workmanship, a design report, and ultimately its performance in a 12-mile endurance race. Monetary awards are given to the winning team in each category, as well as the overall winner.
The Fall 2011 Chainless Challenge team consisted of seniors Lee Ann Monaghan, Jaesik Yu, and Braun, who completed the initial design and initial construction during the fall semester, while they were taking the class. Once the class was done, they stayed on the team to help the Spring 2012 ME 470 seniors with the design and construction of the bike. The team has been guided through both semesters by their faculty advisor, Professor Liz Hsaio-Wecksler.
“Obviously, her expertise was fluid power,” Braun said, “but she was able to help us in a lot of different directions, because this wasn’t just about fluid power. She was able to offer a very diverse amount of guidance and point us in the right direction and offer all sorts of alternatives to the courses that we were considering, just to make sure we were going in the right direction.”
The team is working hard on the bike to finish in time for the race in April, and Braun thinks they will have a satisfactory product in time.
“From the very beginning of this assignment, we sort of developed a priority order of components that could be sacrificed if we weren’t close enough to finishing them,” he said. “That’s another major probability, that if we can’t get certain parts to work we’ll sacrifice them, as long as we’re able to actually compete.”
Like many Senior Design teams, the Fall 2011 Chainless Challenge team experienced an unexpected sense of dedication to their project.
“The real thing that was beneficial about this project was that it had the same problem-solving mindset as a lot of our engineering work, but it had much more tangible results than anything else I’ve ever done. I was able to get very emotionally invested in this project. I even gave it a name and drew up a logo. It was basically something where I was able to take a lot of ownership for what I was doing, and I found myself much more highly motivated to succeed in this particular challenge than anything else I’ve done here. It was extremely satisfying.”
The bicycle is called the HIPPO, which is an acronym for Hydraulic Integrated Pedal Powered Ordinance. The team and their faculty advisor plan to go to Irvine, CA in April with their completed bicycle to compete in the contest.