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On April 4th, for the third year in a row, Algonquin College students and Carleton University students teamed up to design and produce a crash test dummy being used in bicycle / automobile collisions.

Students from the Mechanical Technician – Toolmaking program started work on this project two years’ ago when they machined all the parts for the crash test dummy and then enhanced the dummy last year. This year students from the three-year Mechanical Engineering Technology program worked on some additional improvements to the dummy as well as the track on which the bicycle is propelled in the test with Faculty from both the Mechanical Technician-Toolmaking and Mechanical Engineering Technology programs.

“This year’s test went better than anyone involved on the project would have imagined. As late as the day before the official launch on Friday, both the dummy and the track were not cooperating (as is often the case with these types of projects) and there was talk that perhaps the media should be called off but they worked really hard fixing the problems and the crash test went off extremely well. I had two teams of students that were working on the project: the Biomechanics team was involved with making improvements to the dummy and the other, the Simulation/Emulation team, worked on simulating the crash conditions. The Biomechanics team re-designed many of the dummy’s body parts to better simulate the movement of an actual person’s joints which resulted in more accurate test data from the sensor’s implanted in those areas of the dummy. The Simulation/Emulation team helped design the track that drove the bicycle toward the crash and ultimately launched the dummy. They were solely responsible for designing the braking system on the track.” Stated Mechanical Engineering Technology professor Sandra Brancatelli.

The Members of the two Algonquin College teams are:

Biomechanics: Jason Pell, Micheal Hii and Andrei Potapov

Simulation/Emulation: Kitiphong Norasith, Scott Hall, Neil Fevrier and Ali Khalladi

Sandra went on to say, “I am very proud of what both of these teams have achieved. We joined Carleton University on this project in September well after it had begun and yet not only did these students quickly become fully contributing members of the team, in many cases they took on leadership roles. This has been an excellent learning experience for our students and we are looking forward to continuing this collaboration with Carleton University next year.”

Read more and view video of the test in an article published in the Ottawa Sun here.