News

Presidential Report

Hi Everyone,

I hope your summer has been eventful and moving along, it seems we are about halfway through summer and here at Theme Park Engineering Group we keep on chugging. Over the summer we have maintained a small work force to keep developing Project Altius, we are hoping to have it launching by the Ohio State Involvement Fair, it is only 6 weeks away. We have nearly all the systems in place it is just a matter of tweaking our design to make it work just right. We just came back from Waldameer over the weekend and had a tour by the GM Steve Gorman, he did a great job explaining different aspects of the park and its rides. It was truly a unique experience. Thanks Steve! This event was put together by one of our sister groups at the University of Toledo, hats off to you Jeff, well done! For this upcoming year, we are planning on making a trip out to IAAPA in Las Vegas and also we have a big new engineering project that we will be developing… think wet…

Thats all for now,
Go Bucks,
Brad

Past News

Bill Watkins
Bill Watkins (engineer of Disney's Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mtn. and many many more) came in to give a 4 day lecture series on a discussion of roller coaster design.

Kings Island
First of all we had an incredible educational trip up to Kings Island in October, which was put together by Brian Kosmac of Kings Island, (thanks Brian we greatly appreciate it). We had the chance to see the construction of the new coaster, Diamondback, and also check out other aspects of the park’s operations. Not only did we get a chance to see great engineering, we had an engineer, Korey Kiepert from Gravity Group, come up to the park and give us a presentation about designing roller coasters.

Project X
Also this quarter it should be noted we have been doing a lot of work on our unique tower design project, we have split our members into 5 different groups: tower, base, cart, launch, and automation. Right now the general specs are: 10 feet tall, comprised of steel & concrete, it will be portable; it will be an air launch mechanism, approximately 200 lbs, along with a few other unique aspects. We only have a few more weeks of design; we are putting all the separate components together this week in our CAD programs and moving on from there. If all goes as planned we will begin construction in the winter quarter.

CoasterDynamix
We are currently working with CoasterDynamix on a new project and we currently have a team working on creating a new accelerometer system which will transmit data wirelessly, this is looking to be a very good project.

Junior Engineering Technical Society Competition
Another big milestone for the group this quarter was completing the exam for JETS (Junior Engineering Technical Society), we are excited to have been authors in the 2009 competition and look forward to seeing how students do on it.

University of Cincinnati
The University of Cincinnati currently has students which are organizing a similar organization to us here at the Theme Park Engineering Group. We are very excited about what they are putting together and will be collaborating with them in the near future.

Bill Watkins Course
We are currently reformatting a course packet that Bill Watkins created, who designed Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain and has had worked on many of the Disney classics that you know. He will be coming to OSU in the Spring Quarter to give a 4 day short course on designing roller coasters.

- Marketing and recruitment is going to be a big push for the Autumn quarter, we would like to really strengthen our numbers allowing us to conquer more projects at once, we want people to become more committed to projects, come up with projects and take them on. We have a lot to offer and need the man power to run the group, we will be needing members to step up and fill in leadership position in the very near future. Thank you to Kelly for recruiting during the summer, job well done.

- JETS Competition: we have submitted our proposal to the committee and will be awaiting to hear back from them at a later date

- Kings Island Construction: We have locked in a contact at Kings Island to follow up on the construction of the new ride

- Graduate and Faculty: We have been interviewed by grad students about creativity concepts within the university and contacted by OSU faculty to talk about the contacts that we have at Kings Island on a panel in Cincinnati in September

- CSE Department Contact: We have established a contact with the CSE department for work on a graphing utility for the CoasterDynamix project

- IAAPA Podcast: We have created a podcast demo that we are going to be sending to IAAPA we are interested in creating a running collaboration with them to add audio media to their website, contact me if you are interested in creating the show either the actual recording "voice", news research etc.

- Website: Check out the website, WE HAVE A OPENING MONTAGE! If you have fast enough internet there is music that is embedded that hopefully you can hear with the video

Engineering and Design Report

- Autumn Quarter Project: Create an accurate Excel (or matlab) program that will run calculations determining ride design. These would include Dynamic and Static calculations, and possibly include thermodynamic calculations. This would be an active model of the educational course packet that Bill Watkins has created.

- Continue Coaster Dynamix Project: Find a program to graph the data, consult with the CSE department about this, research smaller/cheaper accelerometers

- Consider beginning design for 10 foot steel tower model, designing the functional aspects of the ride and doing calculations of stress both on the tower and the cart.

Research

Inside Access
i. Seek inside access to ride construction/ development at "local" Theme Parks for our documentation goals
Engineering Details
i. Equations and concepts- Research subjects: this will be mechanical as well as structural.
Design Team Support
Provide research and assistance to Design projects as needed.

Purchases

T-shirts- wait for any sponsors so we can add logos
CoasterDynamix expansion kits
IAAPA Trip funding
Books and literature- only if library plan doesn't work out
Kings Island Trip funding- follow construction of 2009 coaster

Parks to Target for Partnership:

	Six Flags Corporate

	Holiday World

	Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom

	Coney Island

	Hershey Park

	Knoebels

	Kennywood

Bill Watkins – Disney Engineer

Bill Watkins came and talked to the Theme Park Engineering Group about his background and how he designed his rollercoasters Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain and many others. He brought in the original layout drawing and the construction pictures of Space Mountain in Disneyland, which was incredible to see. He also showed us booklets of his company that he started, Ride and Show, and many of the projects that they worked on such as Earthquake and Jaws. This was a great event and we are very fortunate to have him come in and talk to us on such a personal basis.

Update on Cedar Point Trip

We are planning on our second trip to Cedar Point before they open, we are hoping to see them put trains on the tracks and many areas of training in action.

Balsa Model

All four sides are up, we will be painting the model in the coming weeks. Check out the blog for pictures!

New Albany Trip

We had sign ups for the New Albany Education Trip, we will be going to school in the next two weeks visiting and talking to the students about roller coasters and the physics of the rides.

The Cedar Point Winter Education Trip was awesome, what an experience! Eric Lapp did a great job showing us around the park and teaching the group about a lot different rides, again, kudos to him! We checked out the maintenance department and how they are refurbishing the trains in the off-season, they were working on the Millennium, Mantis and Mine Ride trains. They had a whole assembly line process of replacing every nut and bolt and doing non-destructive testing on the chassis, very interesting. We saw Maverick, Mean Streak, Power Tower, Top Thrill Dragster, Camp Snoopy and Disaster Transport. All the members learned a lot and had a great time. Thanks again Eric! Go Bucks!

New Albany Middle School Project

We have recently been contacted by the New Albany Middle School to help work with their interdisciplinary unit on roller coasters. More news on this later.

ACE Article

We have been referenced in a current edition in ACE News.

Faculty Presentation

Our very own faculty advisor Denny Guenther will be presenting a study of theme park ride failures in the upcoming weeks.

Model Update

We are currently creating a wood model of our own current ride design. We will begin painting, theming, an assembling. Meetings are every Monday at 8:30 pm.

Research Team

The research team has acquired an ASTM F-24 book that elaborates on the details of the ride design specifications. We are highlighting the important aspect to apply to our ride design. Meetings are Mondays at 8:30 pm.

SWE Fundraiser Update

The SWE Fundraiser went well. We are very pleased with our all of our member’s involvement. Great Job!

Cedar Point Slide Show

Brad Engel showed us his pictures from the Cedar Point Winter Educational Trip from all the rides that we saw. We should be updating the website to put a few select pictures on here.

That’s all for now
GO BUCKS!