School Of Engineering Competition Teams Unveil Homemade Vehicles
The School of Engineering’s competition teams showcased never-before-seen vehicles designed and built by Liberty students Thursday during CFAW.
The showcase displayed the hard and creative work of students on different competition teams. These teams built a Formula race car, a Baja off-road racing vehicle and a human powered vehicle. Each Liberty team of engineers with different niches and focuses compete across the nation.
The Human Powered Vehicle Team took fourth place in the international competition and placed second in America behind UC Berkeley. Patrick DaCosta, a junior in the Mechanical Engineering Program, is the design team lead of the Human Powered Vehicle Team.
“My design process started almost a year ago, in late April or early May, with just sketching out ideas,” DaCosta said. “My job was to design the frame and then help everyone else intergrade their designs with
the frame.”
DaCosta designed a fully aluminum frame instead of the traditional steel frame, cutting the total weight of the vehicle in half.
Jared Darius, the founder of the Formula Racing Club, started the club about four years ago and is now a graduate engineering student and an advisor for the club. Darius was a part of the Human Powered Vehicle Team his freshman and sophomore year, but by his junior year he wanted to compete on the “next level.”
Darius, along with his best friend, came up with the idea to compete in a Formula SAE competition, hoping to put Liberty on the map with all of the best engineering schools around the world.
The Formula SAE competition puts on intercollegiate competitions for students to design and build a race car, gas or electric powered. Both Darius and his friend wanted to take on this challenge and be a part of not only a team, but also start a club. The club itself grew to over 50 students, and the process to get there was described by Darius as a “God send.”
After brainstorming and designing the Formula race car, the team went down to Charlotte to present it to a panel of engineers. The panel liked the design, added to areas where they could improve and also included a huge amount of funding for car parts and tools.
The Formula Racing Club has evolved and grown since its start, and team members will head to Las Vegas this summer for a national competition. The car has been designed and constructed over the last three years through the help of outside sponsors. There will be an acceleration, speed and autocross test for the car to complete.
Brooks Pearce, a senior in the mechanical engineering program, is the current team captain of the Formula Racing Team at Liberty. Pearce is challenged and motivated by working on the car with his team, as they all have the same goal in mind.
“I’ve seen myself grow, not only as an engineer, but also as a communicator,” Pearce said.
Students who are members of the competition teams put a large amount of their time into designing and constructing the cars. The Center for Engineering Research and Education (CERE) is where the cars are built along with where the tools are stored. At CERE, team members spend part of their Saturday working together to continue designing and building the car.
Marc Jantomaso, the lab manager of the School of Engineering, believes the competition teams equip students with good communication skills and lifelong friendships that go beyond a classroom setting. He asserted that the value of each team is more than just developing and learning hands
on skills.
“If you look at Scripture, God is always bringing (people) together,” Jantomaso said. “God created us for those relationships, and our world is constantly trying to push us away.”
Jantomaso believes the competition teams push students out of their comfort zones where challenges and difficulty arise to produce a refined student, person and future engineer.
Lauren Shank is a News Reporter. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenmshank.