This rice transplanter selects seedlings from the hopper and plants them into the ground using a four-bar linkage designed by Mark Plecnik.

Mark Plecnik designed this spatial 5SS steering linkage to increase the track and increase the camber as the vehicle turns.

400 seniors in majors across UCI’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering presented posters describing over 70 senior projects. Over 140 volunteers from Engineering student clubs set-up, cooked, served, and cleaned-up the BBQ in UCI’s Engineering Plaza.

This spherical four-bar linkage concept by Kaustubh Sonawale guides the wings of the Icon A5 in the movement shown in the animation.

This is a spherical four-bar linkage concept by Kaustubh Sonawale designed to fold the wings of an Icon A5 small aircraft.

Kaustubh Sonawale designed this four-bar linkage to move a truck spare tire from a stowed position to the deployed position.

Mentor program for collegiate competition projects

Introduction:

SAE is a leader in demonstrating the importance of major engineering competition projects to engineering education. Colleges around the world have adopted this model and included FSAE and similar competitions as part of their educational program. Despite budget limitations, universities are increasingly moving to major competition projects to develop and demonstrate the engineering skills of their students.

The excitement of building and testing remote controlled airplanes, autonomous underwater vehicles, Mini-Baja and FSAE racecars and other projects attracts students and provides them meaningful experience in team engineering, as well as the opportunity to prove their skills to potential employers. Industrial mentors are needed to team with the faculty advisors in order to ensure the student engineers get the most of these experiences.

more…

Some years ago my 2008 FSAE team prepared Wiki pages with background information for racecar engineering. Those pages were recently rediscovered by our 2012 team. There is a lot of interesting and useful information. Please see the links:
1. Summer 2007 racecar research; and
2. Fall 2007 racecar research.

Planning for the 2012 Energy Invitational is underway. Please sign up at the website Energy Invitational to get more information.