Engineering students plan smash fundraiser for capstone project

The Smart Airfoil Blade team is holding a Car Smash outside the Leddy Library on Monday, May 14.

A group of fourth-year engineering students have planned a smashing way to raise funds for their capstone project.

The Smart Airfoil Blade team is holding a Car Smash outside the Leddy Library on Monday, May 14. The team will set up an automobile from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and charge passers-by $2 to take three swings at it with a baseball bat or sledgehammer.

“It should be fun,” says Abhishek Nayyar, the team’s treasurer. “We are taking all safety precautions.”

The funds raised will go toward materials for a prototype of an airfoil blade that uses shape memory polymer and smart trusses to morph with varying wind conditions.

“This in turn will improve efficiency of current small-scale wind turbines and make harvesting of wind energy more profitable and reliable,” says team captain Cristian Clavijo. “We intend to stress the idea that design does have a real impact upon peoples’ quality of life.”

Besides Nayyar and Clavijo, team members include Dhrumil Mehta, Kosy Ndubisi, Adam Jasek and Luis Varon, under the supervision of professor Vesselin Stoilov.