TEAM HINDUSTHANI LAHURIANS – HINDUSTHAN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY, COIMBATORE

Introduction:

Efficycle is an intercollegiate design competition for under-graduate and post-graduate engineering students where teams have to design and fabricate an energy efficient hybrid human powered- three wheeled-electric vehicle. The vehicle must be aerodynamic, highly engineered, safe and ergonomically designed. The design should be commercially viable as a product and should be attractive to the consumers because of its visual appearance, performance, reliability and ease of operation. The Competition includes designing, fabricating and validating a three wheeled vehicle driven by two drivers. Vehicle must be driven simultaneously as well as alternatively by two drivers and also simultaneously or alternatively on electricity.

Virtual presentation

Virtual presentation is a national level presentation event in which the teams registered for the SAE NIS Efficycle competitions are supposed to present the design of the vehicle before well experienced judges from reputed automobile companies. More than 250 teams registered for the competition out of which 90 teams will be selected for the final competitions.

Every subsystem of the vehicle such as roll cage, steering, brakes, suspension had to be carefully chosen and their choice justified. The various parameters such as turning radius, stopping distance, weight and all were to be calculated.

Results and Fabrication Stage

The results were announced by nearly 1AM. It was Vignesh Anna who called me and informed that our team got cleared for the Virtuals. I was half asleep and told “Ohh fine Congrats” and hung the call ;-)

It was only in the morning that I realized he did call and called him back. We went and met the HOD in the morning along with Mathew Sir and he was really proud of our achievement. All of the teammates were honored for our hard work during the inauguration of the Mechanical association in our college.

THE TEAM!! HINDUSTHANI LAHURIANS

Day 0 (8th October, 2014):

We reached Delhi by 7th October and took a bus to reach Chandigarh where the final competitions were to be held. We were ten team members and our Faculty guide Mr. Y. Ras Mathew accompanied us.


The final events conducted in University Institute of Engineering and Technology, Chandigarh, Punjab. We collected our vehicle from the transportation company in the morning. Pits were allowed to each team. There were some minor works that we had to do and spent the entire day with fabrication work. We returned hotel by late night.

Day 1 (9th October, 2014):

We reached the college early in the morning itself as we had a little more of the welding work left. The competitions were divided into Static and Dynamic Events. The teams which cleared the Static events were given with a Tech OK sticker and were only then allowed for the Dynamic events.
The first event was the Figure of 8 test where we were asked to completed an “8” track. The test checked how good our left and right steer was. Balachander and Nandakumar (3rd year Mechanical) were the drivers for our vehicle. The Figure of 8 test was a very crucial test as we would not be allotted with the Tech OK sticker if we didn’t pass the preliminary checks. Unfortunately, the main problem that we faced during our test was drive was the steering.

Balachander and Nadakumar

Day 2 (10th October, 2014):

We presented our vehicle before the Safety Check team and they made sure that we made the necessary changes and marked our vehicle as Safety Check cleared.

It was followed by the inspection of our Electric drive. Now it was my responsibility to accompany the vehicle as I was supposed to answer the questions raised. They asked about the motor’s rating, battery rating and all. I was asked to produce the Data Spec sheet of the motor and they ensured that our motor, battery was within the said ratings by a multimeter. The drivers were asked to give a full throttle and they measured the current rating. Without much difficulty, we got cleared in that event too..!

Day 3 (11th October, 2014):

The day was a heavily scheduled one for us as we had to complete the entire Dynamic events within the day.

I and Mounikrishna presented the Marketing plan of our vehicle. We were supposed to establish a business plan and production plan layout along with proper strategies to put our vehicle into the market. We also had to design a poster stating the theme of our Efficycle (thanks to Sakthi Anna for helping us with the poster). The judges raised a few questions on our marketing strategy and gave good comments on our presentation.

Day 4 (12th October, 2014):

The final and the most awaited Endurance test was in the spectatorship of a large audience and various media. The vehicles were arranged in the order of their ranking and TEAM HINDUSTHANI LAHURIANS were in the 8th position. The final endurance test track stretched across the UIET campus. We were supposed to run our vehicle continuously for 2 hours on the track and the laps were counted.

After competitions

We had our train back to Coimbatore from Delhi and we set off to Delhi in a bus. We reached Delhi in the morning and took a tourist traveler bus to visit the main attractions of Delhi.

 All were so exhausted after the competitions and hardly had 4 hours of sleep every day. We never spared a minute that we got to sleep in the bus while roaming around Delhi..!!

Results!!

The final rank list was put up on the official website of SAE NIS Efficycle. We ranked 15th All India level and this being our first attempt and a 15th rank was a big achievement.

I can confidently tell that the success of our team is in the hardwork and the team spirit of each and every member. Though we were divided into subgroups, all of them co-ordinated and help each other regardless of the division. The Efficycle competition helped us a lot to bridge the gap between the textbook and practical knowledge.