Can a car really get 3,300 miles to the gallon? The U-M Supermileage Team is on its way to proving it can. The new student team will compete in its first ever competition this summer, the SAE International Supermileage Challenge, in Marshall.
The competition challenges student teams to design and construct a single-person, fuel-efficient vehicle with a small four-stroke engine — a lawnmower engine.
“We are taking something that is in your backyard, and turning it into something that’s sleek modern and high-performance,” says mechanical engineering senior Laura Pillari, project manager and co-founder of the team.
The team’s goal this year is to beat the North American record of 3,169 miles per gallon, and to better it by reaching 3,300 mpg.
“Fuel efficiency is one of those issues prevalent in society today,” says chief engineer and co-founder Brett Merkel, a senior in mechanical engineering. “The technology we’re coming up with can have far-reaching effects, and be implemented in just a few years.”
In fact, it already is. The fuel injection system, designed by mechanical engineering student and team member Lihang Nong, now is the focus of a start-up called PicoSpray.
Members of the 2012 U-M Supermileage Team work on the steering linkage in their workshop at the Wilson Center. Photo by Evan Dougherty.
Merkel says the fuel injection system can drop the price of an engine for single-person vehicles such as motorcycles and mopeds by 70 percent, and create 50 times fewer emissions than the current engines used.
The team used a requirements-based design approach to the vehicle construction, which Merkel says is unique to teams in the Wilson Center. The project was broken down into the individual requirements of the vehicle – chassis, engine and body – and assigned to different groups within the team.
Requirements-based design is a technique that’s been used in the industry for quite some time, says the team’s faculty adviser and Professor of Engineering Practice A. Harvey Bell, but most students don’t get exposed to the idea until later in their education.
“I think these competition teams are one of the more significant parts of these students’ engineering education for that reason,” says Bell, who also is co-director of the Multidisciplinary Design Program and worked in the auto industry for 39 years.
Body team leader Karan Jain, a junior in mechanical engineering, remembers why he got started with the team. “I wanted to have something that I’d accomplished while I was in college, not just sit in a classroom. This is tangible, it’s right here. I can say ‘I did that’.”
The SAE International Supermileage Challenge will take place June 7-8 at the Eaton Corporation Marshall Proving Grounds in Marshall.
