Determined to top last year’s performance, the 2024 PNW Fluid Power Vehicle Team won the Judges’ Choice Award for its unique airless tire. 

This year the team competed in the NFPA Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge from April 24th to April 26th at Danfoss facility in Iowa and won the Judges Choice Award—which is granted to the team that had the best design, a goal that the team had set out to achieve but had alluded them last year. 

“Our original plan was to make a spokeless tire, which we made last year. Our biggest problem was that the tire would leak air, so we wanted to solve that problem [and] started making our airless tires,” said Samuel Torres, a Mechatronics Engineering Technology major and club president.

The challenge created a friendly and challenging environment to encourage strategic critical thinking. Teams are encouraged to make connections, learn, and aid growth in the fluid power industry.

“We were tasked with building a hydraulic vehicle that has to be human-powered and efficient,” said Torres. 

The team competed in the competition last year and although winning an award, they ultimately fell short of what they wanted to accomplish. 

“Last year we won best use of electronics,” said Torres. “We want to …, push ourselves because we don’t want this to be a normal bike. We want to keep improving and push our ability to the limit.”

The team faced more challenges this year than compared to last year but adding more people improved the work and ideas of the bike and project. A three-member team is now eight.

“Although we have more people, there’s more work. … Last year we only had one tire, this year we worked on two,” he said. “It’s more beneficial having more people because we have more minds to bounce stuff off of.” 

The team hopes to continue to compete in the future and improve upon its successes. 

“We improved and achieved the goal we set out …, we were the only team that built the frame and tires from scratch,” he said. “All of the judges were intrigued and impressed with our design and were proud of the progress we made from last year.”