Engineering students at Dartmouth College began designing a hybrid car three years ago with the hopes of racing it in the Formula SAE, one of the premier automotive design competitions for college students. Before they could enter their race car, however, the competition rules changed to prohibit hybrid vehicles.

Three years later, the students and professors at Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering have launched a separate competition in conjunction with Formula SAE and the Society of Automotive Engineers specifically for hybrid race cars. The inaugural event began Tuesday at the New Hampshire International Speedway, where cars from seven college teams from across the country were judged on design, acceleration, handling and endurance.

Doug Fraser, a Dartmouth engineering professor and director of the Formula Hybrid Project, said the competition is far more challenging for graduate and undergraduate students than the traditional Formula SAE, which is based on technology and techniques that engineers have already perfected over the years.

Hybrid cars are fueled not only with gasoline from an internal combustion engine, but also with electricity, which cuts back on the amount of fuel used but requires more complex electrical and mechanical engineering. At many colleges, Fraser said, the mechanical and electrical engineering departments are on opposite ends of the campus. At the competition, the different majors are encouraged to work together and negotiate, he said.

The collaboration in uncharted territory often leads to new ideas because most of the students have never worked on hybrid cars and don't have preconceived notions about the way they work, Fraser said.

"They're thinking outside the box because they haven't got a box to think inside of yet," he said. "If 90 percent of their ideas don't work and 10 percent of them do, that's pretty good."

The competition is a culmination of nearly a year's worth of work for most of the students. Several schools participated, including Dartmouth, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Florida Insitute of Technology, McGill University, Yale University and Illinois Institute of Technology.

The cars must conform to a set of rules, or formulas, that promote fuel efficiency and drivetrain innovation. The first day of competition included technical inspection in the speedway garages and judging before a panel of five design experts, including an engineer from Toyota, one of the competition sponsors. Students also present a business plan for their cars to a marketing panel and demonstrate how the cars could be put into production.

Yesterday, teams competed in acceleration heats and an autocross, in which drivers must navigate a course marked by cones. Teams start off the race with a set amount of gas, about 15 percent less than what the average Formula SAE car would use. The goal is to finish the competition, including a 14-mile endurance race today, with the gas in their tanks.

The drivers must be able to complete a 75-meter acceleration run in 15 seconds, meaning the car must be able to travel an average speed of about 11 mph down a 156-foot stretch of track. They must also finish the endurance race in 60 minutes or less, maintaining an average speed of about 14 mph. Students have to share driving responsibilities throughout the competition, and there must be a driver switch halfway through the endurance race.

Most of the students are receiving some kind of class credit for the project; for many of them it is a requirement to graduate. It is safe to say that all of them have put in extra hours outside of class time to work on the design and practice, Dartmouth Professor John Collier said. There has never been a race like this one, and none of the cars has much of a history, he added. Although Toyota has been an innovator in manufacturing hybrid cars, most of that technology and those parts are not readily available, and students still don't know much about the way they work.

"Everyone has different problems, and things fail for reasons that you don't really expect," Collier said.

A team from Embry-Riddle in Daytona Beach, Fla., had an inkling that their car's vibration was causing some kind of problem with a wire connection. As they rolled the car to the starting line of the acceleration run and received the go-ahead, with dozens of other teams looking on, the car stalled. They rolled it back and started furiously adjusting and twisting the car's insides, as the driver nervously looked on.

"These kids have no experience," said their adviser, professor Jack McKisson. "They don't know that something will always go wrong. They're not familiar with Murphy's Law."

About 40 students worked on the Embry-Riddle car, which had another shot at the acceleration run and completed it in about 15 seconds.

Single page