An Auburn Department of Mechanical Engineering senior student design team won the 2016 Air Force Research Laboratory University Challenge for the second time in the five-year running competition.
The team previously won the competition in 2014 and finished in second place in 2015. The AFRL challenge prompts students from across America to solve a field problem within the United States Air Force Special Operations Force.
According to the AFRL Design Challenge website, the technique of soldier descent from helicopters via rope is known as fast-roping.
David Beale, mechanical engineering professor, explained that many soldiers descending from the helicopter would carry loads varying from 300–450 pounds, this could lead to serious injury such as soldiers receiving burns from the rope or landing on other soldiers below.
Beale, who guided the design team throughout the task, explained the problem in detail.
“There’s a rope hanging from a helicopter … and the [Special Operations Force] goes down [the rope] like a fireman goes down a pole," Beale said. "They have a lot of weight [on their back], and it burns their hands. [The soldiers] want an assist device so it won’t be just their hands and feet [to carry them down].”
With this problem, the senior design team came up with the solution of a two-piece set of equipment called the Descent Assist System.
Beale and Gurley explained that one piece is a metal rope insertion device the team named TRIAD. TRIAD stands for Tactical Rope Insertion Assist Device. When using this portion of the solution, soldiers attach themselves by harness to the top rod of the assist device for security, run the hanging rope from the helicopter through the TRIAD device and slide down the rope while maintaining grip on the device.
The device was tested on Auburn’s campus with 150-pound tires and a quick release mechanism.
The second piece of the design are the Heat Resistant Tactical Gloves, a special mixture of Kevlar and other materials that greatly reduces friction burn from the rope. Soldiers who use the Descent Assist System must first wear the gloves, attach themselves to TRIAD, TRIAD to the rope and then proceed down the rope.
The tactical gloves and the TRIAD system each had their own teams for design, creation and completion.
The competition took place at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in a special field for testing. Auburn competed against many schools such as Brigham Young University, John Hopkins University, Ohio State University, Purdue University, Texas A&M University and several Armed Forces academies.
Special Operations Force personnel tested competitors’ devices and proposed solutions from a 45-foot tower. Beale recounts that many of the solutions provided by other schools were good, but not practical. Auburn tested their design on the first day of competition.
At the competition site, Auburn’s Descent Assist System was considered nearly “field testable” by the Special Operations Force out of all of the other proposed solutions to the fast-roping problem.
“Our solution kept working," said technical adviser Austin Gurley. "[The Special Operations Force] took [the TRIAD System] back and kept testing it for a week.”
The students started the project early in the fall semester and completed in early April for the competition. There were many rejected designs throughout the process.
“Everyone doubted us, even our university sponsors,” explained Logan Brost, a member of the team. “There was a lot of negativity toward our team. Up to the last five weeks, we did not have a design to present with. At the competition we were the only team that met all of the requirements.”
The first two designs that Auburn offered were actually rejected by the Air Force before competition.
“The students started to do really well [with the project] in January,” Gurley said.
The students went through five prototypes, each an improvement of the previous design, according to Beale.
“There was a point that we were failing so much [in the design process] that it pushed us to work harder and do better,” Brost said.
It wasn't until the following week after the competition that the team heard the results of their hard work. The Air Force personally came to visit the team and awarded them with their first place trophy for winning the competition and completing the challenge.
“We had to be innovative in deciding what was good and what wasn’t,” Brost said.
The biggest takeaway from the competition was time management, according to the team.
“Don’t procrastinate on real world stuff … it was cool going through, taking what was in your head and putting it on paper and seeing your idea come to life in the full process, very interesting, ” said Ric Gilliland, another member of the team. “Learning from failure is a huge thing.”
The many rejected designs helped the team design an outstanding final product.
“If you keep failing and keep trying, you will make it to your product,” Brost said.
Since the competition and graduation, several members of the team have received job offers from Lockheed-Martin Aeronautics in Fort Worth, Texas. Several are going to graduate school at the University of Alabama, one is remaining in Auburn for an engineering firm, another is working for a construction engineering company, another is headed for the defense industry, and yet another is working for a solid rocket booster company in Colorado.
The team was led by Caleb Clemons, Logan Brost, Brent Gilbert, Ric Gilliland, Josh Grant, Meredith Jones, Jake MacKay, Zach Martin, Morgan Pelt and Dalton Roe. Austin Gurley was technical adviser over the project, graduate Wesley Hunko helped in manufacturing the device, Professors Lewis Payton and Roy Broughton provided guidance throughout the project.
Brost and Gilliland are in the process of applying for a patent for the team’s Descent Assist System.
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