Projects rev up creativity of engineering students

By MATT BIXENSTINE
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
CANFIELD -- To an outsider, the work of Youngstown State University engineering students at the Canfield Fair may look like nothing more than an odd collection of gadgets.
A motored vehicle that gets 255 miles per gallon of gasoline. A canoe made of concrete. A robotic walking machine.
But to anyone who knows better, these and other student creations in the fair's Technology Building represent engineering creativity at its finest.
"A lot of people think of engineering as boring and dull," said Cynthia Hirtzel, dean of YSU's College of Engineering and Technology. "It's being creative with math and science the same way an artist is creative with paint or a musician is creative with an instrument."
Prize-winners
In this case, that ingenuity spawned impressive finishes when engineering students entered the items, designed and constructed outside the classroom, in various national competitions last school year.
Recent YSU graduate Bryan Votaw, 23, of Salem was captain of a team of mechanical engineering students who won Best New Design honors for their entry in the 2003 Walking Machine Challenge in April in Mexico City.
The competition consisted of six events, including a race, obstacle course and object retrieval.
"We started working on it the June before competition," Votaw said. "It was the first year for all three of us."
In the 2003 Ohio Valley Regional Canoe Competition, held in April in Lexington, Ky., YSU finished fifth -- ahead of all other Ohio schools.
Hirtzel said she is proud of the fact that many of the student creations routinely place well in national competitions against private schools that devote more financial resources.
Equally significant is the hands-on experience the students gain while competing, she said.
"That's the whole point," Hirtzel said. "That they get to design and build their project is probably as important as classroom experience."
Stretching a gallon
Still, students are always striving for more innovative and improved means of production, said H.W. Shawn Kim, chairman of YSU's department of mechanical and industrial engineering.
As an example, Kim gave YSU's supermileage vehicle, on display in the technology building.
Mechanical engineering students entered their product in the 2003 Supermileage Competition in May in Kalamazoo, Mich. There, each vehicle was judged by how far it could travel with one gallon of gasoline.
YSU's vehicle, powered by a 3.5 horsepower engine, traveled 255 miles on its single gallon of gas, reaching speeds of about 35 miles per hour.
"This was our fourth year [in the competition]," Kim said. "We expect to have a vehicle travel 500 miles per gallon by next year's competition."
YSU senior Lance Kraynak, 21, a civil engineering major, worked on several student projects, including the concrete canoe.
"I think all these competitions, regardless of whether it's a supermileage car or a canoe, are very important, even if we're not faced with designing these things in the real world," Kraynak said. "It's all the same process -- analyzing, brainstorming and designing something to submit [to an employer] for approval."
For the canoe competition, a team had to incorporate lightweight materials to keep the craft's density below that of water, thus keeping the canoe afloat.
"That was probably the toughest competition we've ever done," Kraynak said.
The process was difficult but rewarding, Kraynak said, now that the projects are on public display.
"We want the community to get to see what we've done," he said. "There's always a future employer out there somewhere who might see something we've done."
mbixenstine@vindy.com