Cornell Wins Student Recycling Competition

18 August 1998

Cornell Wins Student Recycling Competition A team of student engineers from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., captured top honors from America's car companies at the Pontiac, Mich., Silverdome on May 31 for the best use of recycled or recyclable materials in a student competition sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers.

The first place prize was $1,000, and the second place prize of $500 was awarded to the University of Washington in Seattle. Judging the competition were representatives from USCAR's recycling partnership.

"We used as little material as possible in our vehicle so less material goes to landfills (at the vehicle's end of life)," said Peter Krimmel, a human factors engineering major at Cornell and the team's recycling spokesperson. "Our vehicle contains a steel frame, and the other parts simply attach to the frame for easy removal. We only used three different types of aluminum for easy material separation."

The University of Washington took a similar approach to Cornell's.

"Our design is very simple and light, and contains very few parts," said Washington's recycling spokesperson, Mark Eskridge. "Our engine contains 23 percent fewer parts than our design from last year."

This award category in the student competition supports the mission of USCAR's recycling partnership, as well as good business practice: to promote the increased use of recyclable and recycled materials in vehicle design. The vehicle recycling group works to identify and pursue opportunities for joint research and development efforts among Chrysler, Ford and GM to recycle, re-use and dispose of motor vehicles and vehicle components.

"By sponsoring the recycling award, USCAR hopes to challenge the student engineers to consider the entire life cycle of their car design," said Robert Pett, USCAR's Vehicle Recycling Partnership chairman. "After all, these students are the auto industry's engineers of tomorrow, and they will be increasingly challenged to deal with recycling issues in the production cars and trucks they design and develop."

The Formula SAE Competition for engineering students requires that they conceive, design, fabricate and compete using small, formula-style racing cars. The restrictions on the car frame and engines are limited so that the knowledge, creativity and imagination of the students are challenged. The student teams take about a year to design and construct the cars. Each is judged and compared with more than 100 student-designed vehicles across the nation.

For the purposes of the competition, the students assume that a manufacturing firm has engaged them to produce a prototype car for evaluation as a production item. The imaginary manufacturing firm plans to produce 1,000 cars per year at a unit cost below $8,000. The challenge to the student teams is to design and fabricate a prototype car that best meets these goals. The intended sales market is the non-professional weekend autocross racer. The car must have high performance in acceleration, braking and handling. It must be low cost, easy to maintain and reliable. Its marketability and profitability can be further enhanced by such factors as aesthetics, comfort and use of common parts. In addition to the recycling category, cars are judged in three different categories: static inspection and engineering design, solo performance trials, and high performance track endurance.