Students unveil secret weapon

While most University of Kansas students are taking their final exams, Jayhawk Motorsports will be racing cars. The team of engineering students is going to the Society of Automotive Engineers’ Collegiate Formula Car Competition in Romeo, Mich., during finals week to race the car they designed and built throughout the school year. The team is expecting one part of the car to separate them from the other schools at the competition. Jayhawk Motorsports is adding a rotary damper to its car design. The part, which is also called a rotary dashpot, is not commonly used on cars, and the team expects to be the only team at the competition to use it.

“It’s a pretty complex design and something that’s taken a lot of thought and testing to validate,” Tanner Rinke, captain of Jayhawk Motorsports, said. “No other team will have it at the competition.”

According to the Web site of Efdyn, Inc., a company that sells them, rotary dampers are devices used to give control to a machine working at high speeds. For Jayhawk Motorsports, that means the driver of its racecar can accelerate the car and still maintain control of it.

Rinke said the rotary damper is something the team has been pursuing for several years.

“This year we finally got the gumption to go out and do it,” Rinke said.

Carrie Wilkinson, secretary treasurer of Efdyn, said it is unusual to use a rotary damper on a car.

“They are really not used on vehicles, but I can see how that would be effective,” Wilkinson said. “You could better control the speed of the car.”

Wilkinson said that rotary dampers are commonly used in military equipment and copying machines. She also said Efdyn frequently sells the part to moviemakers in Hollywood looking to control speed and motion on a camera.

Rinke says that Jayhawk Motorsports chose to design and build its own rotary damper, rather than buying one.

“They are very expensive,” Rinke said. “That’s why we developed one on our own.”

Wilkinson said that the rotary dampers sold by Efdyn can cost as much as $4,000.

Jayhawk Motorsports will race with the new part May 16 - 20 at the SAE Collegiate Formula Car Competition.

Steve Daum, collegiate programs manager of SAE, said he is expecting130 teams from all over the world to participate in the competition.

“The purpose of the competition is to give students a forum to improve engineering project management skills in an engineering environment,” Daum said.

Daum said that KU is expected to be one of the top teams at the competition.

“They finished 4th last year,” Daum said. “That is really a challenge.”

Rinke said this year Jayhawk Motorsports hopes to win.

“We have everything set up to win the championship and we’re certainly pushing for that,” Rinke said.

Robert Sorem, associate dean for undergrad programs in the school of engineering and the faculty advisor to Jayhawk Motorsports, said the team has grown he began overseeing it in 1995.

“The team started as a glorified go-cart and moved to a full scale race car,” Sorem said. “We’ve been at this for 12 years as a good, solid race team developing more expertise and better performance goals.”