NASA funds Engineering's regional hovercraft project

by Tom Uribes

ASA has awarded the College of Engineering and Computer Science a two-year, $185,000 grant that will create a unique partnership with area community colleges and high schools and result in the construction of a two-person, 1,000-pound hovercraft.

Dubbed "Project Explore," the award was announced Oct. 1 and is among several given nationwide to educational institutions that are designated Hispanic Serving Institutes, said Dr. Satya Mahanty, chair of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. Mahanty wrote the grant proposal.

The awards are part of NASA's efforts to attract minority students into the math, science, engineering, and technology areas through Partnership Awards for Innovative and Unique Education and Research (PAIUER) grants.

Fresno State students from the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department and Professor Walter Mizuno will serve as integrators for the project. NASA-Dryden Space Research Center will be overseeing the project status.

Minority students from the university's MESA (Math, Engineering, and Science Achievement) Program will also participate, along with students from Fresno City College, Reedley College and Reedley High School.

Mahanty said the primary goal of the grant is for Fresno State to develop teaching modules in topics such as aerodynamics, aerostructure, power train design, thrusting systems, controls, and telemetry.

Community college and high school teachers at the participating sites can use the modules to enhance regular classroom instruction and to aid in the design of the hovercraft.

Mahanty said Project Explore is a creative opportunity for Fresno State to reach out to local schools with resources that can help train better teachers while also establishing interaction between them and the university's engineering professors.

While the teaching modules are the main focus of the grant and will be intended to help local community college and high school instructors improve their instruction techniques, Mahanty called the design and construction of the hovercraft from the modules the "carrot" of the project.

"Teachers and students from the participating sites would be exposed to state-of-the-art software packages in solid modeling, finite element analysis, mechanism kinematics, and computational fluid dynamics," Mahanty said.

Initial plans call for the hovercraft -- which will be able to negotiate land and water - to travel at 45 mph and have a 500-pound payload capacity.

Dr. Karl Longley, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science also hopes the hovercraft vehicle will serve as a "high flying" useful recruitment tool.

For more information, contact Mahanty or Mizuno at (559) 278-2368.