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TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — For a team of students at the University of Alabama, a brand new 2016 Chevrolet Camaro topped with a red bow delivered just before Christmas marks the beginning of the next phase of an engineering challenge to retain the iconic sports car's performance while making it more energy efficient.
On Tuesday, UA's EcoCAR3 team officially unveiled the Camaro that they will spend the next two years re-engineering as part of a nationwide contest sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors.
"It is a really exciting program," faculty adviser Paul Puzinauskas said.
The UA students are among 16 teams of university students tasked with designing, developing, and integrating powertrains into a Camaro that will allow it to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining the performance and safety of the production gasoline vehicle. Student must also consider cost and innovation as part of the process.
The contest requires student-led teams to consider a variety of aspects including mechanical, electrical, computer and software engineering, as well as communications, marketing, fundraising and project management. The team offers students a mix of managerial, design and support roles and draws from disciplines across campus.
"It is very interdisciplinary," project manager Kaylie Crosby said.
There are 150 students participating on the UA team subdivided into three main groups for engineering, management and communication with 19 sub-teams for specific aspect of the project. The team has five faculty advisers.
The progress of the teams is evaluated annually in end-of-the year competitions. The re-engineering must be 50 percent complete by the end of the second year, and the team must have a show-room ready car by the end of the fourth year.
The UA team plans to make its Camaro more energy efficient by converting it into a blended plug-in hybrid by replacing its stock combustion engine with a smaller combustion engine supplemented by two electric motors.
It will spend the next four months installing the new hybrid powertrain, said A.J. Hamley, a senior mechanical engineering major who leads the innovation sub-team.
Under the team's plan, the 3.6-liter, six-cylinder stock engine will be replaced with a 2.4-liter, four-cylinder GM engine, a Parker electric motor, a Denso electric motor, and a 12.6-kWh battery pack in the trunk.
The goal is to increase its fuel efficiency from the stock 28 miles per gallon to the equivalent of roughly 50 mpg, Hamley said.
The re-engineered Camaro is designed to be able to select among its electric and combustion power sources depending on performance needs.
The challenge for the team as it crafted a design for the new powertrain during the 18 months since it was selected to participate was to figure out how to fit the new components into a vehicle that was engineered without the parts in mind, Hamley said.
"The biggest challenge during the design phase has been space," Hamley said. "The Camaro is a two-door sports car."
Weight was also a concern, he said.
The team's goal for the redesign, according to Hamley, is to retain the character of the Camaro as a sports car capable of seating four with some trunk space, which was reduced with the addition of the battery pack.
The team's design still allows for storage of two "overnight" suitcases in the trunk, Hamley said.
The contest is modeled on the GM design process, Hamley said. The teams have the option of using existing GM parts or integrating new parts. UA's team is doing a bit of both. Hamley said the team was retaining the Camaro's GM transmission and adding an existing GM 4-cyclinder engine and two electric motors from other manufacturers.
In May at the end-of-the-year competition, the team's car and its new powertrain will undergo a function and safety test.
"It doesn't have to work as a system but the individual parts need to work," Hamley said.
The remaining two years will be the refinement of the design.
At the end of their participation, students will have practical experience working in an automotive design process.
"They are coming out of this with experience as a GM engineer," Crosby said.
Crosby, a 22-year-old MBA student with an undergraduate degree from UA in mechanical engineering, and Hamley both have job offers from GM.
It's an exciting opportunity for the students on the team because the students have access to millions (of dollars) of state of the art equipment and tools through the sponsors, Puzinauskas said.
The contest is the latest in a series of Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions (AVTC) by the U.S. Department of Energy aimed at developing the next generation of automotive engineers.
"We are talking about tools and things like that that even our faculty have not been exposed to yet," said Puzinauskas, an associate engineering professor in UA's Center for Advanced Vehicle Technologies.
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Information from: The Tuscaloosa News, http://www.tuscaloosanews.com
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