NIU team wins second straight national title in fluid-powered vehicle race

DEKALB, Ill. (WTVO) — A team of NIU science majors is celebrating winning a second national championship title in a row in a competition of student-designed, fluid-powered racing vehicles.

The National Fluid Power Association’s Fluid Powered Vehicle Challenge asks students to design and build fluid-powered vehicles.

Last year, a 12-person team of Rock Valley College and Northern Illinois University engineering students took top honors.

The bike uses fluid pumped by pedaling to drive a motor.

“We designed a fluid-powered vehicle through hydraulics that has to compete in several different challenges,” said fluid power vehicle team lead, Jaron Benson.

This year’s all-new team built a bike using pressurized oil to propel the vehicle, winning grand championship for the school for the second year in a row.

“Last year, the team did very well. They got first place and so we were able to use their blueprint, make some improvements on the bike to enhance it even further, to make it even more fluid and mobile. And we were able to come out on top again this year,” Benson said.

“We’re really proud of all of our competition teams. But yeah, the Fluid Power Competition team winning that national competition team back to back two years in a row is making us very proud that we know this. We know our students are great. They go off and do great things while they’re here, and they’re going to do even better things when they go out and graduate and get into the real world,” he added.

The team hopes to inspire the next class to continue its legacy.

“It’d be great to keep up the momentum going, be great to get a chance to talk to any upcoming seniors next year that are going to be taking part in the project and giving them any input that we learned from this year. Hopefully, we can just get them more and more involved to kind of support our projects to be able to kind of get more knowledge into the students as they approach their senior year. That way, they’re not approaching it quite as cold feet as before when it comes to design hydraulics. So if we can just keep that collaboration going, then each year we can be more prepared for that,” David Grewell, dean of the College of Engineering.

The NIU team beat out Cleveland State University and the combined Florida A&M – Florida State College of Engineering for the grand championship.