A team of 25 students from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at St Joseph’s Institute of Technology, Chennai, won the first prize in a Tractor Designing Competition organised by SAE Southern Section at SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur. To provide farmers with a compact, multi-utility, multi-functional farm vehicle that is capable of unmatched performance both on and off the road, team Z-TorQ designed and fabricated an eco-friendly and compact vehicle called Ignito -The Tractor. “The conventional tractors available in the market lack compactness and are comparatively costly which eliminates the use of tractors for small scale purposes. Our team focused on the requirements of the small-scale customer,” said Srinath C, a final year Mechanical Engineering student.
The team from St Joseph’s won The Best Durability Award along with a cash prize of `25,000. The motive of the competition was to design, develop, fabricate and test the tractor built completely by undergraduate engineering students. The competition was held for the first time in South India from June 21-23 and saw participation from 16 colleges across the southern states.
Explaining the design and durability of the tractor, Srinath said, “The design of the tractor is greatly dependent on the target zone of customers. We wanted to contribute to the sustainable development of agriculture and also to be a part of an automotive revolution in the field of farm machinery. The design concept primarily aims at the mobility and the better performance of the tractor.”
The tractor was examined and inspected for various technical aspects as well as overall performance under different segments by experts from companies such as TAFE, Simpson and Co, Ashok Leyland and Mahindra. The performance of competing vehicles were subjected to a technical inspection and tested for manoeuverability, durability, design aspects, NVH (noise, vibration, harshness) and braking efficiency.
Reach Out: stjosephstechnology.ac.in
