Undergraduate engineering students from Macquarie University who used the runway at Central Coast Airport for speed trials for their entry in the 2024 World Human Powered Speed Challenge at Battle Mountain Nevada have returned home with two world records.
Six students took their custom-built bullet shaped aerodynamically designed vehicle named MQ2 to Nevada’s Route 305 for the global competition.
Under the leadership of Dr Sammy Diasinos, senior lecturer at Macquarie’s School of Engineering who had six years’ experience as a Formula 1 race engineer, the project provided students with a real-world experience of live deadlines and racing pressure with their design.
For the students, participation in the project meant being able to gain experience in applying their knowledge in areas including aerodynamics, computational fluid dynamics, computerised design and 3D body scanning to tailor the vehicle for their race rider, professional track cyclist Lizanne Wilmot.
To ensure the rider’s safety at speeds approaching 100km/h the students developed customised telemetry to monitor the performance of the vehicle in real time enabling it to be safely stopped should any issues be detected.
Chosen by the students for their challenge the Human Power lay in the form of Wilmott who has ranked in the world’s top 100 in both cycle sprint and keirin events.
With great trust in the students not only for the integrity and safety of their design but for those who duct taped her into the fully enclosed recumbent tricycle for the actual speed trials, relying on events outside the capsule being accurately displayed on screens fed by two externally mounted cameras.
The MQ2 Speed Team broke two world records on the same day.
Firstly, in the women’s 600/200 category with a speed of 63.3km/h.
Then finally on the very last run of the series, the Nevada winds dropped allowing Wilmot and the MQ2 to shatter the women’s Flying 200 record by an impressive 5km/h to set a new world record of 96.8 km/h.