ROURKELA: Students of National Institute of Technology, Rourkela (NIT-R) have yet again proved their mettle in constructing a design-efficient human powered vehicle (HPV) at the HPV Challenge hosted by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
A human powered vehicle is a pedal powered mode of transportation. It is both ecologically sustainable and gives car-like comfort and experience. It is billed to be a most sought-after future mode of transport.
ASME has clubs in every technical institution across the world and hosts HPV challenge annually. This year, the competition is being held virtually and in two phases - critical design review challenge and innovation challenge.
The 12-member NIT-R team designed a HPV titled ‘Bluestreak 8.0 HPV’ that bagged third rank worldwide in the ASME Critical Design Review Challenge and first rank among 79 Indian participating colleges. The results of the challenge were announced on March 16 and the NIT-R team scored a 45.30 out of 55 points. The team is now awaiting the results of ASME Innovation Challenge.
Team leader and third year mechanical engineering student Arun Mohapatra said their design was as per the ASME rulebook with provisions to improvise and accommodate changes. “Our analysis regarding positioning of the handle and pedal, efficacy of suspension, reduction of aerodynamic drag, safety, balance, cost and scopes for further improvisation was also appreciated.”
As the ASME HPV Challenge 2021 was held online this time, the load and endurance test of the vehicle was done using software simulation. Team member Kusha said their HPV with backward leaning seat is designed to avoid body strain during long travel and every design including aerodynamic shape and safety feature were incorporated with logical engineering.
He said it now has top speed of around 40-45 km/hour against maximum HPV velocity of 140 km. Arun said on mass scale production, each HPV may cost between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000. In fact, the HPV Bluestreak 8.0 is the upgraded version of Bluestreak 6.0 which had participated in the ASME Engineering-Fest Asia Pacific held in March 2019 at VIT, Vellore. The NIT-R team had ended up at 9th rank in endurance race and over all 13th rank among 50 participating teams.
The team included Rudra Prasad, Kabi Satpathy, Om Prakash, Priyabrata Mohapatra, Abhishek Pandia, Pratyush Priyadarshan, Shreekrishna Meher, Satwik Animesh, Kusha Kishore Rout, N Soundarya and Risita Jena, all second to fourth year students of Mechanical, Electronics and Metallurgy branches.