Olin College Human Powered Vehicle Team Uses CD-adapco's STAR-CCM+, Wins ASME's East Coast Competition

The Olin College Human Powered Vehicle Team recently participated in ASME's Human Powered Vehicle Competition (East) at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and with the help of STAR-CCM+, finished first place in all categories.

CD-adapco has been a longtime supporter of academia in both teaching and research endeavors. Not only does it offer licenses to academia at dramatically reduced pricing, CD-adapco donates STAR-CCM+ to any academic team that can benefit from CAE simulation. Teams have included Formula SAE, Human Powered Submarine, Baja Racing, ecoCAR Challenge, Eco-Marathon and as seen here, Human Powered Vehicle.

The team placed first in all categories; first overall, first in design report, first in male sprint (38mph), first in female sprint (30mph) and first in the sprint endurance event. The design of a more aerodynamics shell gave Olin College a great advantage. “We finished first place in all categories and a large part of our success can be attributed to a well-designed fairing coming from using STAR-CCM+ for analysis,” said Alex Niswander, Team Lead, Olin College.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) sponsors the Human Powered Vehicle Challenge. Each year, teams from colleges across the nation design, build, and race a vehicle in one of two categories: speed or unrestricted. Olin College has participated in the speed class since 2007. Speed class vehicles are typically fully faired bicycles, and are judged based on a technical design report, a sprint competition, and an endurance competition. In its short history, Olin has had a very successful showing at competition. This past year Olin swept the speed class taking 1st in every event.

Additional information about the race can be found at http://www.asme.org/events/competitions/human-powered-vehicle-challenge-(hpvc)/hpvc-results