Challenge X: Crossover to Sustainable Mobility is a Three Year Student-led Competition Sponsored by General Motors and the Department of Energy.

The goal of the competition is to redesign a sports utility vehicle to emit less harmful emissions while gaining better fuel economy. The competition follows the vehicle development procedure that is used in industry, teaching students real-world processes and better equipping them with tools and experience they need to fully realize the vehicle design process.

The Challenge X selection process, open to all accredited engineering schools in the United States and Canada, began in September 2003, and concluded in February 2004. Over 60 universities applied, and 17 teams were ultimately selected to participate in the contest. The project is broken into three one year phases. Phase one is simulation based, teaching students how to utilize computational tools and processes to optimize components and predict how their changes will impact the finished design of the vehicle. Computational modeling played a vital role in the component design, optimization and packaging. For example, the 1.9 liter Fiat Diesel engine and transmission were positioned in the Equinox’s engine bay and engine mounts were modeled and machined with the help of CATIA and DELMIA. Abaqus was used to perform multiple finite element analysis studies and optimization of the Equinox’s rear suspension cradle. The predictions made in year one were validated in year two, in which the hybrid modifications are implemented. The MSU team chose a parallel through-the-road hybrid architecture, meaning that the vehicle is driven with a diesel engine running the front wheels and an electric motor driving the back wheels. The vehicle uses B-20 biodiesel fuel to help reduce harmful emissions. Year three is spent polishing the hybrid systems and modifying the vehicle for consumer acceptability.

The Mississippi State University team recently returned from the Year 2 competition held at General Motors' proving grounds in Mesa, AZ. The ten day competition put the team's vehicle through many different test scenarios. The team was one of the first to pass the initial vehicle technical inspection, and went on to successfully complete all of the driving trials. The team also presented to the judges how the first year design was implemented into the Equinox. The MSU team returned triumphantly with the 3rd place trophy overall, a significant accomplishment considering the tough competition from top-ranked engineering schools across North America.

One area the team did particularly well in was the outreach competition. Students participate in three categories of outreach; K-12 outreach, community outreach, and media relations. This important part of the competition places emphasis on awareness of possible solutions to the energy crisis, as well as how computational analysis and simulation tools can help solve these problems. Overall, the Mississippi State University outreach team took home the Best Media Relations award, and took the second place overall for Outstanding Outreach.  Other awards Mississippi State University won at the second year competition were Best Towing, Best Drive Quality, Lowest Well-to-Wheels Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Best On-Road Energy Use, and First place in Realization of Vehicle Technical Specifications.

Next year will mark the third and final year of the competition and will be spent refining the vehicle's design and maximizing its performance. The students working on this vehicle come from different academic backgrounds providing a truly multidisciplinary team who ultimately gain excellent computational and hands on experience. Challenge X gives them an opportunity to apply what they have learned in the classroom to a hands-on project.

If you or your company would like to sponsor the Mississippi State University Challenge X team, please contact Bob Kirkland (kirkland@cavs.msstate.edu) for more information. For more information about the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems at Mississippi State University, please refer to www.cavs.msstate.edu.

CATIA V5 Educators Communiqué

Go to WWW.CATIASTUDENT.com or click through from ENGINEERING.com to see the new CATIA Educator’s portal. This new portal is the result of input from CATIA educators who answered a survey earlier in the year. They asked for a place to share lesson plans, get online support, manage licenses and more. Take a look and contribute your thoughts, lesson plans, sample models etc to this community so that others will be encouraged to share with you. This site was built for you.

The first step in the process is to register. Your access will take up to 24 hours to process due to a manual verification step that assigns your privileges based on whether or not you are registered with us as a CATIA or SMARTEAM educator. To begin the registration process, please go to http://community.engineering.com/catiaeducation.

CATIA V5 CAD Lab July 24 – 29
Due to a scheduling conflict, Richard Cozzens 5 day CATIA lab will now run from July 24-29 2006. The 5 day course will run at Southern Utah University. The course will provide an introduction to teaching using CATIA V5 including a 2 day focus on curriculum development.

There is a fee for this course. Please contact the instructor, Richard Cozzens, (cozzens@suu.edu 435-586-7983) for more details and to register for this course.

Instructors First
ENGINEERING.com has partnered with IBM, Dassault and Ascent to create the Instructors First outreach program. Features of the program allow instructors to have a free CATIA V5 license for use in home or office, free instructors manual, and discounts for students on CATIA V5 software and books. Contact David Livingstone at 905-273-9991 Ext 244 for more details.

Manufacturing Curriculum
ENGINEERING.com is pleased to announce that we now offer the textbooks developed by the National Institute for Aviation Research (NAIR) at Wichita State. Their CADCAM lab has done a fine job of developing curriculum on some hard to find topics including; Prismatic Machining, Surface Machining, Stress Analysis and Fitting Simulations & Kinematics.

Additional information on these can be found at www.catiastudent.com or, by contacting Dave Livingstone (905-273-9991 X244 dlivingstone@engineering.com) .