“There are a number of different biofuels being invented, but we don’t yet know if they’re compatible with engines or with the environment,” Vasu said. “It’s our goal to research and get answers to these fundamental questions.”

Vasu and his students research high temperature energy conversion to discover what happens when fuels such as gasoline convert into energy and change into new substances. The creation of new biofuels, Vasu said, brings questions of whether the fuel will emit substances that are safe for vehicle engines and for the environment. In his lab, Vasu uses a shock tube to study how these fuels break down – at what temperature, how long it takes and what they emit.

It’s this work with his student team that led Vasu recently to be named recipient of the 2018 Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award from the Society of Automotive Engineers – or SAE – whose original leadership team in 1905 included Henry Ford. The international award, established in 1963, honors and recognizes younger engineering educators who are preparing students to successfully meet the challenges that face society.

By providing hand-on learning opportunities, that’s exactly what Vasu is doing, his students say. “In [past] internships, I saw a number of engineers doing managerial and quality control work, and I knew that’s not what I wanted,” said Sam Barak, a graduate research assistant and doctoral student. “I wanted to be the one doing the research and creating the protocols. And to do that, I needed my Ph.D. and this hands-on research.”

As the first person at UCF to receive this SAE award, Vasu hopes his student team will grab the attention of an entire industry.

“Traditionally, winners of the award come from the U.S. Midwest, where companies like Ford and GM thrive,” he said. “Just like UCF supplies the power-generation and aerospace workforce, Midwestern universities supply the automotive workforce. This award means that we’ll be able to create a network and pipeline for students wanting to go into the automotive industry.

“I’ll be preparing my students with the knowledge of what automotive industry leaders need and want, and that is so valuable in today’s competitive landscape.”

This is not the first international recognition for Vasu and his team. He was the 2017 winner of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Dilip Ballal Early Career Award for contributions to gas turbine area. His research group also was the subject matter of a 2016 United Nations documentary film, “Combustion Man,” which featured his research on destroying chemical weapons.

Additionally, Vasu received the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Young Investigator Award, and he was an early career grant recipient of the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund. At UCF, Vasu is a 2016 Research for the Stars recipient and an inaugural UCF Luminary. Vasu also is a participating faculty member in the interdisciplinary energy conversion and propulsion cluster and a faculty member in UCF’s Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research.

He will receive this latest award April 10 in Detroit at the annual SAE World Congress.

The Society of Automotive Engineers at UCF built an autocross-racing, one-person vehicle from scratch to represent the university at the Formula SAE Michigan.

The three-day competition began May 11 and provided real-world challenges of systems engineering, design and problem-solving for students trying to work in the auto industry.

This year, the team earned its second-best finish in school history.

For the Formula SAE chapter at UCF, this competition holds the most significance because of the great deal of prestige associated with their participation.

The team paid a $2,000 entry fee, earned through donations and fundraisers, to tackle competition from all over the world including such countries as Singapore, Venezuela and Japan.

The students’ performances were tested by automotive experts from General Motors, Ford and Honda — three companies seeking to hire new post-grad talent.

Formula SAE at UCF placed 14th in the cost report event, in which the jury discussed the vehicle’s cost calculation based on the manufacturing materials.

According to T.J. Yankee, UCF Formula SAE public relations spokesman, the total cost of the car came to $17,000.

SAE placed 15th in the acceleration event, in which the race car was evaluated on its accelerating ability from a standing start over a distance of 75 meters.

Yankee said the team began planning to construct the car during the summer of 2010 because of all the complications that can occur with having to build a car from nothing.

“It’s really difficult to be able to create a car with raw materials that must perform the challenges imposed at the event,” Yankee said. “The hardest thing is to manage the time between doing well in school and building the car.”

The student club met twice a week for a year despite their academic schedules. They dedicated as much time as possible to finish the car and completed the task just a few weeks before the competition.

“For a year, all they lived for was this contest,” said Corinne Jackson, a senior exceptional education major and the girlfriend of one of the 23 SAE members who traveled to Michigan. “Every time I met the team for lunch, all they would talk about was the competition.”

Yankee, as well as 27 of his teammates, also participated in last year’s event.

“We knew this year would be different for us because of the experience we had,” Yankee said.

Jacob Herbst, UCF Formula SAE team leader, is satisfied with the outcome of the event because the team never had any help from professors or mentors, and for the amount of funding collected, the results exceeded members’ expectations.

“I can speak on behalf of Formula SAE [at UCF] that for what we had, we did extraordinarily well,” Herbst said.

For the competition, SAE received $8,000 from SGA, while the remaining $9,000 came from individual efforts.

Next year, the club plans on finishing SAE in the top 25.

“We already began planning for next year’s event,” Herbst said. “The knowledge from this year will help us do better next year.”

Source: Central Florida Future, , by Salo Steinvortz, staff writer. Published: Sunday, June 5, 2011;  updated: Sunday, June 5, 2011 19:06

Visitors to the UCF CECS Open House got to demonstrate some of the unusual machines on display that students work on in their spare time, including a NASA Moonbuggy and a Baja vehicle.

The moonbuggy gets up to 15 MPH on a smooth service, and looks like a recumbent bike with four wheels. Built from spare metal and bicycle parts, the two-seat buggy had to come under a $1,500 budget and be strong enough to hold up to 325lbs.

Students from the Society of Automotive Engineers club built the Baja vehicle to race in regional competitions. Each team had to design, build, test and promote their vehicle to a fictitious company to stimulate bringing a new product to market. Unlike the moonbuggy, these vehicles are built specifically for off-road travel on rough terrain and in water.

Need more speed? The Formula vehicles are designed and fabricated to compete in a small formula-style race. The student teams are judged not just on speed but reliability, cost to maintain, aesthetics and comfort.