Jerrod Bouchard's upcoming attempt to break the collegiate land speed record is picking up speed, and not just on the road! UMR's four-member Land Speed Challenge Team will head to Battle Mountain, Nev., in October to break the 61.5 mph human powered vehicle speed record, and the word is getting around nearly as fast.

Jerrod and his team are featured today in Missouri's two largest newspapers. The official UMR news release is here. The resulting stories are here and here.

Jerrod is also featured on UMR's website today, and he will be the focal point of public interest at a Gateway International Raceway-hosted testing in mid-September. He is also scheduled to be featured soon on TechnoFiles, a science program that airs on KMST Public Radio 88.5 FM. Watch this blog for more details.

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UMR's Solar House Team hosted Missouri State Representative James O. Guest on a tour of the solar village and the 2007 solar house in late August, and Rep. Guest reciprocated by presenting a $1,000 check to support the team's project.
Rep. Guest had plenty of questions about the applications of energy-efficient features of the team's latest entry in the Solar Decathlon, and discussed legislative efforts to promote renewable energy programs within the state. Responding to questions about developing wind farms on Ozarks hilltops, Rep. Guest said that studies indicate that only northwest Missouri has sufficient sustainable wind power to justify the investment in wind power technologies.

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Chancellor Jack Carney hosted a campus-wide reception for UMR's national champion Human Powered Vehicle Team and their "FlyBy" racer this week. Team members in their "Top Gun"-themed uniforms got to show off their recumbent bikes and trikes to faculty, staff, and most important, incoming students who may well become the group's future designers, builders and racers. Pictured here, Mike Janeske gets to have his cake and eat it too, as he sits in a low-slung trike with the team's 2007 trophies lining the walls.

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This weekend, the dorms on campus were repopulated by new and returning students. But there are three people who have their own private residences on campus: Navarre Bartz, Rachel Swearingin and, oh yeah, Chancellor Jack Carney. Two of the three occupy houses that happen to be completely solar-powered.

Navarre (above) and Rachel (below) are lucky student residents of UMR's unique solar village, a three-structure (so far) community of student-designed solar houses. They have privacy, convenience to classes, plenty of parking, and tenants only have to walk across the street to see UMR's sports teams in action.

The first two houses were built for the Solar Decathlon, a ten-event student design competition held in Washington D.C., in 2002 and 2005. Featuring high efficiency appliances, superb insulation and open floor plans, the buildings have been designed to support a comfortable lifestyle in a small package. UMR's first house was a conventional design, but the second was a blend of high technology and Frank Lloyd Wright architecture (it was even featured in Popular Mechanics magazine).

UMR's third house, which has a strikingly modern design, is nearing completion and will be moved to the National Mall in early October. More than 100,000 visitors are expected during the 10-day Decathlon. UMR's entry and all of the other houses in the Decathlon are being designed to provide all of their own electric power, light, heat, air conditioning and hot water. Additionally, they will each be able to charge a plug-in electric automobile.

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Regular classes start next week, but design team leaders at UMR are already learning the tricks of the trade when it comes to team management.

The SDELC is hosting three days of financial and management workshops for newly elected leaders and business managers. Most design teams operate as complex engineering firms with an entrepreneurial focus, and have to deal with investors (donors), sales (marketing and public relations), logistics (team travel) and manufacturing operations -- so new team leaders need to get up to speed on team operations early in the design cycle.

Dr. Paul Hirtz, SDELC assistant director and solar car team alum, has brought in speakers from the UMR communications department and alumni association to teach key principles of fundraising and public relations. Business operations training includes how to understand the university’s accounting systems, how to spend each team’s money, how to track purchases, and how to do project planning.

Shop policies, safety training, vehicle operations and, most important, the allocation of workshop space are covered during the three-day workshop designed to get the teams off to a smooth start during the annual design and production cycle.

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Too fast for Missouri’s highways? How about a free ride on a NASCAR track? That is what UMR’s Human Powered Speed Challenge Team is going to do! Gateway International Raceway (GIR), located just five minutes east of downtown St. Louis, will sponsor UMR’s bullet-shaped recumbent bicycle for extensive high-speed testing next month. Chief Engineer Jerrod Bouchard visited the track last week to show GIR managers “FlyBy”, UMR’s national champion Human Powered Vehicle, explain the group’s new design, and outline the case for hosting future racing engineers at the Madison, Illinois facility.

On the same 1.25-mile banked oval where legendary names like Unser, Andretti and Earnhardt have scorched the asphalt, the group will test mechanical systems and reliability on the yet-unnamed vehicle. They will mimic the Battle Mountain speed run-up by steadily increasing speed for several laps on the closed track and gain valuable experience with the bike handling characteristics.

Watch this space for updates, because the local chapter of the UMR/MSM Alumni Association will be invited as spectators when the track managers provide actual testing windows.

Click here for Gateway’s various events, from ‘tuner’s to Harley drag bikes, sports cars to NASCAR Busch series racing. You an even bring your daily driver to the drag strip, if you dare!

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The UMR Solar House Team has turned to a modern and environmentally-sound design for its entry into the 2007 Solar Decathlon, an international competition to design an innovative, stylish home that is 100 percent solar powered. The team is nearing completion of the contemporary structure in the UMR Solar Village located across 10th Street from UMR’s football field.

Wrapped for months in a reflective foil cocoon that kept the house waterproof but was confusing to passers-by, the house is now swathed in a pattern of dramatic grey panels made of 100 percent recycled paper combined with non-petroleum based resins. The product is called PaperStone Rainscreen, which not only is visually striking but incredibly strong and impervious to hail. It is installed as a stand-off siding, mounted inches away from the house walls. This helps shade the structure during the warm months and the air gap provides a natural cooling system as air flows behind the siding. Both characteristics constitute a passive solar design and reduce the need for air conditioning.

Also: Resin phenols extracted from cashew nut shells are used in the process of manufacturing the gray panels. More after the jump.

Rainscreen is a Forest Stewardship Council-certified building product, which demonstrates the manufacturer’s (and, of course, the Solar House Team’s) commitment to the environment. The manufacturer uses resin phenols extracted from cashew nut shells, a waste product. The manufacturing process is said to use less materials and energy to produce than traditional materials.

PaperStone has more applications than just siding. A thicker version will even serve as the kitchen counter and bathroom sink tops.

After all this work, the solar house will be disassembled, packed up, and shipped off to Washington D.C. in late September. There, it will be put back together as part of a two-week design competition. More updates to follow soon.

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FAST: Six straight East Coast championships for UMR's Human Powered Vehicle Team, and multiple runner-up positions in the highly competitive West Coast races.

FASTER: The first-ever combined national championship by a collegiate Human Powered Vehicle Team won by UMR in convincing fashion.

FASTEST: UMR's dominating cyclist Jerrod Bouchard (also the team's chief engineer) is raising the performance bar even higher.

Jerrod is leading the Human Powered Speed Challenge Team, an offshoot of UMR's dominating Human Powered Vehicle Team, in an attempt to shatter the collegiate human-powered land speed record of 61.5 mph. Bouchard, along with aerodynamics designer Andrew Sourk, team leader Craig George and composite specialist Matt Brown are nearing completion of a bullet-shaped bicycle that they believe will shatter the current collegiate speed record by 10 percent in October of this year.

Details after the jump.

A remote highway in Battle Mountain, Nev., said to be one of the straightest, flattest and smoothest surfaces in the world (and probably more accessible/practical/appropriate than the Bonneville Salt Flats) is the setting for the World Human Powered Speed Challenge, often simply known as "Battle Mountain." This is where cyclists like Jerrod will battle to become the world's fastest human propelled by his or her own power.

Since the start of the millennium, Battle Mountain has been the site of professional, collegiate and amateur record-setting performances. Anyone with a fast bike can race, and all records set are sanctioned by the International Human Powered Vehicle Association.

The as-yet unnamed UMR design shares aesthetics with a torpedo. Barely 30 inches high and only about eight feet long, the bike is being built in two mirror-image halves. Both halves are built on the same mold form. The aerodynamic shell is made of a fiberglass outer skin as uniform as possible and polished to a high gloss to make it rip through the air with as little wind resistance as possible. To strengthen the fairing and protect the rider against a 65 mph mishap, Nomex weave (filled with a glass bead/epoxy slurry) lines the fiberglass skin, making a light weight but near bullet-proof enclosure.

This month, wind-tunnel testing will take place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Bouchard, Sourk and George have been leading participants in the Vehicle Design Summit hosted by MIT. Actual road testing of the prototype will begin in late August. The group is negotiating with managers of a top-tier NASCAR-style race track to run the bike at sustained high speed.

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