ROURKELA: A team of the National Institute of Technology - Rourkela (NIT-R) has come out shining at the prestigious global ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) competition presenting its revised version of Human Powered Vehicle (HPV) Bluestreak 9.0.
Bagging second and third global rankings in critical design and best innovation categories respectively, among 50 top global teams, the team also topped among participating Indian institutions in this year’s edition of ASME competition.
Comprising 24 BTech students, the NIT-R team created the HPV Bluestreak 9.0, an upgraded version of Bluestreak 8.0 which last year had bagged third global ranking in ASME’s Critical Design Review Challenge and topped among Indian participating teams.
Team captain, Pratyush Priyadarshan shared that Bluestreak 9.0 is a completely new aerodynamic design incorporating both electric drive assist and manual drive, while also featuring electrically actuated landing gear system for safety and stability. It has top manual drive speed of around 40 km/hour and maximum velocity of 32 kmph in electric drive. The speed restrictions on the electric drive are as per class 2 category e-bikes and the current HPV is designed for one hour electric drive which can be expanded with higher battery capacity, he said.
The prototype costs about Rs 38,000 and on commercial scale the cost of each HPV may cost between Rs 25,000- Rs 30,000. The electrically-operated landing gear ensures low-speed stability and assists the rider during the start of the vehicle and questions on reliability, test and simulation outcomes were successfully answered during presentation, Pratyush said.
The complete load analysis was performed as per rulebook criteria to test the strength of the frame. The design was optimized and corrected as per test and simulation results step by step. Faculty advisor to the team Suman Ghosh expressed happiness at the team’s performance.