Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., announces that a team of its engineering students, faculty, and staff has designed and built the torches for the 2016 Indiana Bicentennial relay. The final version of the flagship torch weighs nearly five pounds and stands about two feet tall, and will be made entirely of an aluminum lithium alloy from Alcoa’s Lafayette plant.
The prototype torch delivered to Governor Mike Pence is made completely of aluminum, making it slightly heavier than the final manufactured version. In staying with state roots, the torch’s burner flame is fueled with E85, a blended ethanol-based fuel made partly with corn.
Students have been designing the torch since the spring semester. Purdue’s School of Materials Engineering manufactured the shell of the torch during mid-November with final testing of the entire system last week.
The project was a group affair, with about 50 students, faculty, and staff involved since the beginning of the calendar year. The effort going into the project was split among the schools in the College of Engineering.
Students in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics designed the body of the torch and used their knowledge of combustion systems to design the burner. The Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering was tasked with handling and testing the E85 torch fuel, and the School of Materials Engineering worked on the manufacturing and anodizing of the torch’s body. The electronics and software angles – including never-before-used GPS and camera functions with WiFi and cellular connectivity – were handled by two student teams working in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
