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The Badger Herald

Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

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University’s Wisconsin Racing team pushes boundaries of engineering, design through race car building

UW engineering students manufacure, race Formula-style car in national competition; look to innovate in field
Universitys+Wisconsin+Racing+team+pushes+boundaries+of+engineering%2C+design+through+race+car+building
Cadence Bambenek

Most engineering students spend their time cranking out math equations or grinding away for their next midterm. For Wisconsin Racing, midterms and coursework take a back seat to designing, manufacturing and building a model race car ready to test the racetrack.

Wisconsin Racing, is a student vehicle team run through the University of Wisconsin College of Engineering. About 30 engineering students work intensively throughout the year to design and build a race car about one-third the standard size of Formula-style race cars to compete in international and national races every May and June, Max Liben, a sophomore mechanical engineering student on the team, said.

SAE, which stands for Society of Automotive Engineers, organizes the annual SAE Collegiate Design Series. The student design competition started in 1978, but teams from Wisconsin only began competing in 1998. Each team races car prototypes in different events to compete for points, Liben said.

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In May, while the rest of campus is sweating over finals, Wisconsin Racing ships off to Brooklyn, Michigan, for the first competition of the summer. Around 120 SAE design teams and cars from around the world come to race in the international championship. The second competition is held mid-June in Lincoln, Nebraska, Liben said.

Competition days are no easier than finals days.

“You have 15 to 20 people who have spent an unreasonable amount of time on this car and all of that work boils down to four days and how it performs over four days,” Liben said. “Everyone is in overdrive trying to get everything as perfect as possible.”

When the competitions wrap up for the summer, the team immediately launches into the design phase of next year’s model. They work constantly to make the driver’s life as simple as possible, Liben said, acknowledging winning isn’t just about great engineering, but great driving, too.

While engineering may not be everything, the team has a history of strong design and strives to push their design and engineering as far as they can.

“Because we have been competing for so many years, we are sort of able to push boundaries at the competition,” Liben said.

In the past, Wisconsin Racing has pushed the envelop so far it forced race organizers to change competition rules. About 15 years ago, the team implemented an electric throttle to their design, Liben said. The next year, electric throttles were banned.

The ban on electronic throttles has since been lifted, but the team is looking to push boundaries again. This year, the team is developing an electric clutch to control the vehicle launch through the touch of a button, Liben said.

In the acceleration event of the competition, where cars go 0 to 70 mph in a matter of seconds, every second matters. An electric clutch reduces launch time, making the car more competitive, Liben said.

And if an electric throttle and clutch weren’t ambitious enough, Liben wants to build and race a completely electronic car in 2017. Right now, eight students comprise a separate team working on the preliminary designs for the electric model.

Liben said he believes the automotive industry’s shift to electric cars is a matter of “when” rather than “if.” He said he sees potential to do good and make an impact through engineering.

“It’s not something you’re always going to be credited for … but if you design something that’s 1 percent more efficient [and] it’s technology that ends up in a larger industry and the whole industry is 1 percent more efficient, from a global standpoint, that’s a lot of energy that you’re not wasting,” Liben said.

Billy Kucinski, a senior mechanical engineering student, is one of the eight members behind the electric car effort. He joined Wisconsin Racing the summer after his freshman year. Looking to get more hands-on experience, and having grown up going to car shows, building race cars sounded like the perfect fit.

With so much hands-on experience, many of the student vehicle team members go on to intern for companies like Volkswagen, Ford and SpaceX, Liben said. As for himself, Liben is taking his experience to California to intern with Tesla this summer and Kucinski is will also be headed California to work with SpaceX.

Kucinski said the chance to be part of Wisconsin Racing over the last few years has taught him more about cars than most people ever learn in their lifetime.

With the hands-on experience and opportunities Wisconsin Racing has provided him with, building an electric car team is Kucinski’s chance to give back.

Right now, Nebraska is the only North America competition open to electric cars, but a sparse number of teams compete annually, Kucinski said.

By starting a Formula SAE electric team on campus, Kucinski and Liben said they hope to increase the number of people involved and increase the number of students graduating with experience developing electrical vehicles.

“You could definitely say we’re kind of crazy for trying to do this,” Liben said. “The combustion car on its own is already an enormous amount of work … but there’s too much not to gain to not pursue it.”

Correction: A previous version of this article stated Kucinski will be working at Volkswagen this summer, this is incorrect. The Badger Herald regrets this error. 

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