First row: Katrina Legursky, Eleazar Lechino, Brandon Basgall , Sunayan Mullick, Eilish McGuinness, Mary Pat Whittaker, Cindy Dunham, Alejandra Escalera, Arnobio Morelix. Middle row: Julian McCafferty, Darwin May, Yinglong Xu, James Sellers, Luis Berges, Emily Thompson, Andrew Lichter, Ben Tumbleson. Back row: Sean Derry, Evan Iliff, Michael Zielinski, Tondi Kambarami, Mark Fletcher, Evan Reznicek. Photo from University of Kansas.
SECOND PLACE OVERALL WINNER
First Place Business Plan Contest
First Place Engineering Design and Turbine Performance Contest
Project Description
The University of Kansas team competing in the inaugural U.S. Department of Energy Collegiate Wind Competition developed innovative and cost effective solutions to the competitive and technical challenges of small-scale wind energy. Named Jayhawk Windustries, this multi-disciplinary team consisted of aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, and business students advised by their respective faculty advisors and industry experts. See the entire project portfolio below or on the team's website.
Team Strategy
Jayhawk Windustries was organized into a corporate structure with a senior aerospace student acting as CEO, and interdisciplinary functional team leads for the various subsystems. This structure allowed each of the three participating disciplines to focus on a specific aspect of the competition. For example, the mechanical engineering students designed, fabricated, and tested a gearbox and shutdown mechanism while the business students focused on identifying a market for the wind turbine and writing a business plan.
Design Features
- Utilizes modern Additive Manufacturing Processes
- Eliminates risk of improper and unsafe assembly with a segmented blade design
- Minimizes part count and maximizes portability
- Features emergency shutdown and robust components to maximize product lifespan
- Allows for simple and straightforward maintenance and assembly