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The MathWorks today announced that its “Crossover to Model-Based Design” Award for the final year of Challenge X has been presented to a team of student engineers from The Ohio State University. The students were honored for their exceptional achievements in creating, simulating, and analyzing models for vehicle design and subsystem control using Model-Based Design with MathWorks tools.

Challenge X, a four-year student engineering competition that explored vehicle solutions aimed at reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions, involved 17 student teams, each representing a North American university or college. The teams reengineered a General Motors (GM) Chevrolet Equinox to minimize energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining the vehicle’s utility and performance. During the first year of the challenge, the teams focused on modeling, simulating, and testing the vehicle powertrain and subsystems selected by each school. Over the next three years teams focused on the development and integration of advanced powertrain and subsystems. Using Model-Based Design with MathWorks tools was an essential component of each team’s strategy to meet the challenge.

Last year’s award winner, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (Terre Haute, IN ), won second place; University of Waterloo (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada ) placed third.

“We decided to use year four of the competition to take a hard look at what we could improve upon from last year,” said Giorgio Rizzoni, team advisor for Ohio State. “Using MATLAB, Simulink, and Model-Based Design, the team was able to refine its control strategy and improve the overall performance of the vehicle.”

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and GM recently announced the successor to Challenge X—EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge. This three-year competition kicks off in the summer with 16 student teams working to design vehicles that reduce petroleum consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and demonstrate real-world performance of a range of technology options. The technologies explored in EcoCAR mirror those being investigated by the automotive industry.