{"id":4068,"date":"2017-08-31T11:13:08","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T16:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/for-wisconsin\/?post_type=campus_story&p=4068"},"modified":"2017-10-05T15:08:34","modified_gmt":"2017-10-05T20:08:34","slug":"uw-madison-team-earns-hyperloop-competition-innovation-award","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/uw-madison-team-earns-hyperloop-competition-innovation-award\/","title":{"rendered":"UW\u2013Madison team earns Hyperloop competition innovation award"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
The Badgerloop team revaled its in-progress design for the Badgerloop Pod II during an event held for media, sponsors and supporters at the Mechanical Engineering Building in June. PHOTO: JEFF MILLER<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Badgerloop, a team made up mainly of University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison undergraduate engineering students, was among the top competitors at the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition II completed Sunday (Aug. 27, 2017) in California.<\/p>\n

Hyperloop, a concept promoted by SpaceX and Tesla Motors co-founder Elon Musk, is a high-speed transportation system that would carry passengers in pods through above-ground vacuum tubes enabling super-fast travel. The weekend competition, which challenged entrants to achieve the highest speed, drew approximately 600 students from 25 teams around the world.<\/p>\n

Top performers included students from the Technical University of Munich, a consortium of students from Swiss universities, and a collaboration of students from Northeastern University and Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada.<\/p>\n

In addition to clearing all the competition\u2019s technical and safety hurdles, the Badgerloop team earned an innovation award for its elegantly designed and executed propulsion system, the foundation of which is nitrogen tanks connected to thrusters via carefully curved piping. Badgerloop is the only team to have received this award in back-to-back competitions.<\/p>\n

Only three pods were selected for runs in the SpaceX Hyperloop vacuum tube on the competition\u2019s final day. And while the Badgerloop pod was not among those selected, it ultimately passed all the tests that would have enabled it to run \u2014 and earned high praise from judges, says Zuf Wang, team president and a master\u2019s student in industrial engineering at UW\u2013Madison who joined the group as an undergraduate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe built a pod that worked,\u201d he says. \u201cWe weren\u2019t expecting the innovation award, but the judges were all very impressed by the work we put in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Participating in the Hyperloop Pod Competition in January, the Badgerloop team also received an innovation award, as well as an invitation to return to the competition in August. To prepare, the team scrapped its original prototype and built an entirely new, lightweight functional pod with a propulsion system designed to reach a speed of just over 201 miles per hour.<\/p>\n

The team is pleased with its performance, says Wang.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very happy that our pod worked, given the challenges we faced,\u201d he says. \u201cWe had a relatively inexperienced team compared to the previous iteration of Badgerloop for Competition I.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, Badgerloop members will build on the lessons they\u2019ve learned over nearly two years\u2019 worth of Hyperloop experiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe learned that logistical planning is as important as the engineering challenges,\u201d says Wang. \u201cIn our pod, simplicity was a successful decision from the get-go; we had to keep it simple, or we wouldn\u2019t have stood a chance. We knew we would be competing against teams with much more depth \u2014 especially since we\u2019re mostly undergraduates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether there will be a Hyperloop Competition III remains to be seen. However, says Wang, \u201cWe are a world-class team. Badgerloop is here to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Badgerloop, a team made up mainly of University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison undergraduate engineering students, was among the top competitors at the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition II completed Sunday (Aug. 27, 2017) in California. Hyperloop, a concept promoted by SpaceX and Tesla Motors co-founder Elon Musk, is a high-speed transportation system that would carry passengers in pods […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":4069,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","institution":[103],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-4068","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-madison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/4068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=4068"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=4068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}