Designed to reach 70 miles per hour, student-built hybrid race cars became blurs of color encircling the New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Wednesday as 30 teams, representing colleges and universities from five different countries, competed in the third and final day of the Formula Hybrid International Competition hosted by the Thayer School of Engineering.
The team from Texas A&M University took first place overall, followed by Colorado State University and Drexel University. The Dartmouth Formula Racing team did not place this year, but won the IEEE Future of Engineering Award. The IEEE is the leading professional association for the technology field.
"It was a little disappointing, but we made a valiant effort," said Scott Lananna '08 Th'09, one of the four captains on the Dartmouth team.
Lananna said the Dartmouth car took nine months to develop and build. It featured an innovative steering wheel that displayed several different readings from temperatures to voltages.
"We had one of the most sophisticated cars in the competition, and we are very proud of that," he said.
Designing a race car that would withstand the rigors of three days of competition, however, proved to be extremely difficult, Lananna said. The Dartmouth team scrambled to replace a faulty generator just hours before the endurance event, but was ultimately unable to make the final race, he said.
"Our greatest challenge was getting everything to work together," Lananna said. "We have such a great group of people, with everyone's hands on the car, but to get every part integrated is incredibly challenging."
Despite the setbacks, however, Lananna said the team is still excited for future competitions.
This is the third year that the Thayer School has hosted the competition. While most of the participating teams were from colleges and universities in the United States, others represented international institutions including McGill University in Canada, Thapar University in India, National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan and State Technical University-MADI in Russia.
"It just keeps getting better and better," Wynne Washburn Gr'12, the event's deputy director, said. "We have outstanding engineers from all over the world. We've had significant innovations and hope to grow in a safe, effective way."
By challenging students to design a more fuel-efficient vehicle system, the competition helps promote the use of alternative energy, Washburn said.
Participating teams spend months designing, building and ultimately racing plug-in hybrid race cars that run on fuel and electricity.
"We want innovative ideas and push the ideas of alternate energy," she said.
The competition assesses vehicles in several areas. On the first day, May 4, judges evaluated the design, presentation and technical aspects of each vehicle.
Individual events also tested the vehicles' performance. On the second day, the vehicles participated in acceleration trials and an autocross, which tests driving skill and speed, on the NASCAR race track. Vehicle endurance was tested on the third and final day of the event.
The Dartmouth team has been more successful in previous years' competitions. Although McGill University's Hybrid Racing Team has placed first in overall hybrid design the past two years, Dartmouth has won multiple individual awards, including first place in presentation, unlimited acceleration, electric-only acceleration and design.
The annual competition also includes an educational component, as organizers encourage high school students interested in formula racing to attend, according to Washburn.
Since Dartmouth hosted its first formula hybrid race in 2007, both domestic and international interest in the event has risen dramatically. In 2007, there were nine registered teams, representing two different countries and in 2008 there were 14 registered teams, representing four countries.
"We are in the process of figuring out whether to grow or the cap the event," Washburn said.
One of the greatest challenges from an organizational standpoint is "trying to keep it personal as possible while sticking to a set of rules," she said.
