Team members (not standing in this order): Behnam Ansari, Ararat Arakelian, Boozarjomehr Behzadian, Jesse Cordero, Rio Delos Santos, Rey Evangelista, Ricardo Garcia, Jonathan Gorospe, Lior Inberg, John Lake, Mitesh Mistry, Sepideh Norouzi, Ray Palomino, Bruce Rivera, Daniel Sarfati, Maurycy Sarosiek, Michael Studer, Dave Walker, and Bryan Zubiate.
CSUN Breaks Through in Vehicle Design Competition
She is a thing of beauty. Her sleek, narrow, charcoal-colored carbon fiber body rests delicately on her wheels, the front pair crafted of aluminum alloy. Built, as the saying goes, for speed.
Her name is N.E.D. 1.0, and for months on end, she has been the center of attention for about 20 mechanical engineering students (listed above), all seniors, from Cal State Northridge’s College of Engineering and Computer Science.
N.E.D. 1.0—for Never Ending Design—is the reason for Cal State Northridge’s highest finish yet in the Human Powered Vehicle-West competition, which in April showcased the engineering skills of up to 300 students, mostly from western states but including some from as far away as India. Sponsored annually by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the competition this year was hosted by CSUN for the first time in more than two decades.
In a field of about 30 entries, CSUN—and N.E.D. 1.0—placed second in the design category and third overall in the speed class. The competition included a drag race event, staged around the campus’ G3 parking structure, and an endurance event which covered most of the campus. Bales of hay were strategically placed to keep the zoom-zoom on course at speeds up to 40 miles per hour.
CSUN’s breakthrough was the result of rigorous planning and a critical decision to go with a recumbent design, considered more stable and reliable.
“Lots of planning went into this project since October 2009,” said Jonathan Incorvaia, student project manager.
The idea of the competition, explained faculty advisor Robert Ryan, associate professor of mechanical engineering, is to give undergraduates a chance to apply sound engineering design principles as they develop practical transportation alternatives. “The vehicles were designed to be fast and agile,” said Ryan, and they were.
Ryan and College of Engineering and Computer Sciences Dean S.K. Ramesh were equally proud of the event itself, described as “the smoothest-running” of such competitions in years. “I can say with certainty,” smiled Dean Ramesh, “that we have set the bar really high.”
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