UMaine Snowmobile Honored for Best Value at International Competition
Contact: Nick Houtman, Dept. of Public Affairs, 207-581-3777
ORONO, Maine — The University of Maine’s Clean Snowmobile Challenge team received a Best Value Award while coming in fourth in competition among 13 teams at Michigan Tech last week. Teams from SUNY-Buffalo, Clarkson University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison took the first three places.
UMaine’s modified ArcticCat snowmobile stayed in the running for a top spot through most of the events, according to team advisor and mechanical engineering professor Michael Peterson. Those events included a 100-mile endurance run, performance events, and tests for acceleration, fuel economy and noise. It was the latter test that posed difficulties for the UMaine team, says Peterson.
“Apparently two of the qualitatively quietest snowmobiles, University of Wisconsin and University of Maine, were found to be louder than the reference snowmobile, a stock Ski-Doo GSX Sport 600 H. O. Not only did that remove all of the noise points (up to 300 points) from the score, but Wisconsin and Maine were also ineligible for best design and best performance points.”
Peterson says the UMaine team, all seniors, achieved significant gains over last year. “The students learned a lot and showed their ability to work as a team and to present the quality program at the University of Maine to a broader audience. The team built a snowmobile that reduced emissions by 99% and sound (as we can measure it) by 90%. That is quite an achievement, and a unique way to finish their course work in one of the most rigorous engineering programs in the country,” says Peterson.
The Clean Snowmobile Challenge is the Society of Automotive Engineers’ newest collegiate design competition. Teams of engineering students from participating schools take a stock snowmobile and then re-engineer it to reduce emissions and noise while maintaining or improving performance.