Eh? UMD snowmobile team most innovative

A team of University of Minnesota Duluth engineering students took home the Innovation and Best Manufacturability awards at the 2015 Clean Snowmobile Challenge in Houghton, Mich., last week.
Their development of a chassis dynamometer testing technique was the innovation that impressed judges.
“We set up a big water tank, about 8 feet by 3 feet, and would run the snowmobile track in it to test our modifications,” said Dylan Dahlheimer, a senior and the UMD team captain. “It was great because the force of the water is similar to the fluid load of snow so we could immediately tell how much power it was using.”
The challenge is offered by the Society of Automotive Engineers to encourage innovation in reducing snowmobile emissions and noise levels. The University of Wisconsin-Madison took home the traveling cup that is the competition’s top prize.
UMD’s team received a new sled from Arctic Cat last November and made numerous modifications.
“Our machine is reliable and would be easier to reproduce than many of the other teams’ sleds,” Dahlheimer said. “I think that’s why we won the manufacturability award.”