BROOKINGS – Practice doesn’t always make perfect but it sure helped a group of SDSU engineering students receive honors as builders of the fastest racing bikes in the country.
The South Dakota State University mechanical engineering students just returned from their second Human Powered Vehicle Challenge in as many months and managed to move up to second overall. The team finished third at the Las Vegas competition March 17-20 and then was the runner-up in Cookeville, Tenn., April 21-23.
Both contests are sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Schools can enter either contest. SDSU was the only school to compete at both.
Team captain Jake Ostby, a senior from Cologne, Minn., said having the extra weeks to practice between competitions was a big help. The bike wasn’t fully finished until just a few days before the March contest and the three-wheeled vehicle with an enclosed cab built with carbon fiber doesn’t ride like a two-wheeled, upright bike.
Judging is in five categories: design, innovation, men’s sprint, women’s sprint and 2 1/2-hour endurance. At the contest hosted by Tennessee Tech, SDSU finished first in all three races, was third in design and ninth in innovation.
Endurance ride a team effort
The endurance contest allows for multiple riders (at least one male and one female) and involved hill climbs, sudden turns, stop signs and other obstacles on a 1.73-kilometer course.
“Steering is quite a bit different (than on a bike),” Ostby said. “You have to know what to do if you throw your weight the wrong way. I got up on two wheels once when I was given a late command (by the course marshal) to turn right and I was expecting to turn left. Riding and knowing how to handle the weight shifts is a big deal.”
The endurance riders – sophomore Alex Gray and seniors Libby Molitor, Weston Christensen, Ostby and Darrin Zomer – were carefully selected by Ostby and Gray.
“I thought long and hard for about two weeks about what I wanted to do for a team. We did a lot of testing on campus and had six or seven people come out for time trials,” Ostby said.
Another factor was shoe size. The team had three pairs of cycling cleats. Gray, Christensen and Zomer wear the same size of shoe and shared a pair of cleats, so they couldn’t follow one another on the bike.
Ostby also choose the group’s best athletes. Gray is an experienced endurance bicycle racer. Molitor is an SDSU pole vaulter and Christensen is an SDSU swimmer. Ostby had Gray and Christensen ride the maximum of 20 kilometers while Molitor and Ostby were sprinters for 5 kilometers, the minimum distance. Zomer went 6.9 kilometers when time expired.
Other teams were involved in the pit stops. Riders were actually lifted out of the bike. A pit stop took only 15 seconds compared to a couple of minutes for slower teams.
Not slowed by rain
The sprint competitions were handled by Molitor and Zomer, who hit 32.9 and 37.9 mph, respectively, on the rain-slickened, 400-meter straight course.
Ostby said the wet conditions slowed the initial acceleration but didn’t prevent them from reaching top speed. However, “the rain also filled in a big pothole close to the finish line that Darrin didn’t see until it was too late to avoid it. There was no damage to the bike at all but hitting the pothole definitely did not help decrease Darrin’s (finishing) time at all,” Ostby said.
A group of 11 students and adviser Greg Michna, an associate professor in mechanical engineering, made the 1,050-mile trip to Cookeville.
This is only SDSU’s third year participating in the contest, finishing 17th in 2015 and 23rd in 2016. Michna credits this year’s marked improvement to a group of dedicated students who put in well over 800 hours in creating this year’s entry, The Black Jack. With earnings from Cookeville, the team received $1,600 prize money this year.
Plans are to use those funds for next year’s entry, which will be directed by Eric Looyenga, who was elected 2017-18 captain at the group’s April 26 meeting.
