(upbeat music)
-: Welcome to the Complete Engineering Podcast,
brought to you by the College of Engineering.
We are Nebraska, where we build complete engineers
with the technical and non-technical skills
to do big things.
Visit us at engineering.unl.edu.
-: Hello, we're with Bob Bielenberg and Cody Stolle.
with the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility.
I'm Matt Honke with the College of Engineering.
-: And I'm Karl Vogel, also with the College of Engineering.
-: And we're here today to talk about
the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility,
and just some of the great things that they've done
over the course of their history.
This is an anniversary year for them, the 20th year
I believe of the safer barrier.
-: From the instillation of the safer barrier
in Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1998,
it has been one of the biggest innovations
in Auto racing, including saving numerous lives
and preventing major injuries to drivers.
But that's not all the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility does
their work is seen all over the world
and in basically every roadway in the country.
We would like to talk to Cody and Bob and get
more information about what it is that they do
and where we can see their work.
-: So welcome Cody, welcome Bob, we'll start with
asking what work is being done right now at the
Midwest Roadside Safety Facility to improve
the lives of all people around the world?
-: Sure, so our main focus really is highway safety,
and that's been our focus since the facility started
back in the 80s.
What we're really looking to do is, if a vehicle goes
off the road, how we keep that driver safe.
So we try to design the roadside to be safer,
weather that's making, getting rid of hazards
or obstacles that are on the side of the road,
so if you go off the road you don't impact them
or designing barriers to keep you safe,
to keep you away from hazards on the side of the roads.
So we've been doing that for a lot of years
and that's been our main focus,
when it comes to the safety aspect and then there's
other things that we've looked at over time.
You mentioned the safer barrier, that's a pretty neat thing
that we got an opportunity to do over time.
And Dr. Stolle's done a lot of work looking at
department of defense applications.
-: Yeah we have, using the background in vehicle
dynamics and crash relevance we were able to
design some very innovative features for
the Department of Transportation and
Department of Defense, protecting military
insulation from people who might be of nefarious intent
trying to cause some havoc, maybe destroy some buildings
or harm some people.
We can safely guide them to the side of the road
where their vehicle is disabled and where they can be
captured, while at the same time safely protecting
those people who use the facilities every day.
-: So your work is not just here in the state of Nebraska
we're having an impact, not nationally but worldwide as well
it's not just Nebraska doing the work,
you mentioned earlier when we were talking
about another anniversary that's Midwest Pooled Fund
program, can you kind of explain what that is
and why Midwest is central in that?
-: Yeah the Midwest Pooled Fund Program started back
in the late 80's and the idea was at the time
that a lot of states had roadside safety needs
trying to get any one state to fund the crash testing
development of some of these roadside safety applications
is fairly expensive.
So the idea was to get a group of states
and originally it was in the Midwest so it started with
Kansas and Iowa and Nebraska and those states
and Missouri and trying to get them all together
so it started with a group of four to five states
and it's grown now it's 19 states and our states
range from California to New Jersey.
You know a lot of states in the middle of the country
as well and so those states, for the last 30 years have been
funding, they get together, they bring all their safety
problems to us and we talk to them about them,
propose solutions to them.
And then they prioritize which ones each year they want
to do to try and address what's their highest priority
needs and right now that's about a $1.2 million
per year program of research fundings.
So it's probably the largest pooled fund program
of it's kind in the country,
and it really is addressing the safety needs
for the entire country, not just Nebraska specifically.
-: And you have a very unique facility,
and we're not talking about the offices
at Whittier Hall,
you're talking about the testing facility you have
out at the Lincoln Airport.
What kind of work can you do out there to innovate
in the field of highway safety?
-: The kinds of work that we like to do is really
anything that's dynamic, if it impacts,
if it crashes together, we can generally perform that.
We've everything from real vehicles that we've purchased
on fleets to surrogate vehicles that we create,
fabricate in house so we can use them
over and over and over again.
Doing some very challenging things.
We can do speeds as low as 30 miles per hour,
or upwards is as much as 180 for safer tests.
-: Wow.
-: We test vehicles from small cars all the way
to semi tractor trailers, so it's a very fully functional
type of environment.
And even beyond the crash testing we do other types of tests
that evaluate components where we don't even need
a vehicle at all, we can measure the properties
of those components and see how they react
under a dynamic environment and the types of materials
that are used in those components,
and evaluating and compare those.
-: Yeah I've had the pleasure of seeing three
of the tests and I've seen everything from a semi
going into a safer barrier wall to a pick up truck
hitting a guard rail and then the most recent one
was knocking over some signs and just seeing
how you guys measure it and everything,
it's so fascinating to watch, the high speed cameras
that you have, the drones, everything it's just
an amazing event to watch even.
So I'm sure you guys get out of each of those tests
that you're doing.
-: Yeah, yeah it certainly never gets boring for us,
I've been doing it for 20 years and I still get
pretty excited on test day.
-: Yeah we can do, you know the stuff, the information
we collect in those tests is very high-tech research
that we're doing out there, we're able to measure
how the barrier reacts, how the vehicle reacts,
weather or not the occupant would be safe.
And like Cody said that can span a pretty broad spectrum
of types of impacts,
and we intend to extend that in the future,
right now, you know we wrote the crash testing standard,
that document is what all the lab's are using
to test roadside hardware and that will expand
if we keep pushing the boundaries of what that document's
gonna include so one of the things that we,
Cody and I looked at is looking at non tracking impact
right now we do all our impacts as impacts
of the vehicle tracking into a barrier in a straight line
essentially, different angles and speeds.
One of the things we've found through accident investigation
is that's not necessarily true, up to 40% of
our impacts are actually vehicles that are spinning
or non tracking, not going straight into a barrier.
That's something we want to expand on in the future
and I think with our test facility, again as Cody mentioned,
we run tests that no where else has in the world,
the stuff that we did for the safer barrier, those are,
as far as I know, no one's ever tested over 70 miles
an hour, we get 150 plus miles an hour.
So we also think we can throw things into barriers,
vehicles into barriers in non tracking impacts,
where they'll be spinning and yawing
as they impact the barrier, so that's kinda the next step.
So we keep trying to, every year, every time we get
new research, tryna kind and push the envelope of
what we can test and how we test it and trying to
collect better data.
-: It sounds like it'd be kinda fun,
you get to think up ways to destroy cars and trucks right?
It's like every little kids dream is crashing
your tonka trucks or your hot wheels right?
You guys are actually doing it and saving lives
and it benefits, is that what got you into this field is
your love for cars or is it your wanting to solve problems?
-: Absolutely I mean I can say that when I first started
my research in Midwest one of the first projects
I did was to evaluate real crashes, federal databases
and real crashes and the types of impacts
in the conditions that we saw.
And from that I was deeply effected,
to see the devastation it can cause
when a car hit's something that it wasn't supposed to hit
something near the side of the road.
Trees are the number one killer of drivers
who are on the side of the road, if they impact a tree
or utility pole, 3500 deaths every year for trees
and 1000 more for utility poles, it's a substantial problem
and it hasn't gone away in 40 years.
And it's the types of very heart breaking crashes
that really motivated me to go deeper.
To work with all the staff in Midwest
and to expand that research, covering everything
from barrier design, to safer road features
and slopes and bridge spans and features
that are resilient to impact from trucks
that are occurring underneath the bridge.
And to really push the envelope like Bob said
go where people haven't gone before.
And really make the entire transportation grid safer.
-: Yeah I think, one of the aspects at least for me
that's kept me interested in the facility,
there's obviously the safety aspect and the aspect that you
are helping keep people safe and that you know,
it's very satisfying on that level.
Another aspect is, it's very technical, it's very difficult
and the problem's always changing, so one of the things
when I was in school, you know when I was a mechanical
engineering student and I told myself, I really like
mechanical engineering, I don't want to design car door
handles for the next 30 years.
And you can do that and it's a great thing,
somebody has to design door handles, I didn't want
to do that for my long term job.
So one of the benefits of working in a research place
like this is that problem always changes,
you can move the problems to what is most important
and what's the highest priority in our field and
keep kind of pushing the boundaries and that keeps the job
very interesting and it is very technical.
One of the things that got me interested is that
we're one of the, the main centers in the country
that does computer simulation work for roadside crashes.
So we use a program called LS-DYNA, which is,
the auto industry uses, sports industries use,
it's the cutting edge on computer simulations.
So we can model the crashes before and after we run them
to learn more about them, that's stuff that you don't
get at every university in the country,
and so that was another thing, you know we,
it's very technical, it has a satisfying goal
and outcome and the problem's always changing
so that, that makes it a great place to work everyday.
-: Well this is the Complete Engineering Podcast,
and that's in reference to the complete engineer initiative
we have here at the University of Nebraska.
It's made up of six main competencies,
Intercultural Appreciation, Leadership, Self-Management,
Service and Civic Responsibility, Teamwork and
Understanding of Engineering Ethics.
I guess going over those six, I'm sure that very one
of them are touched on within the Midwest Roadside Facility,
but how would you say, how does it help
develop complete engineers?
-: Definitely an aspect of our complete engineers
is we try to take new young engineers, expose them
not only to the research world, but also to their
professional responsibilities to that world that we live in.
We feel it's a very important aspect of our lives
to train students into leaders, to be the next managers,
to be the next decision makers of the future.
And so our students are trained to handle decisions,
to complete their own projects from start to end,
to conduct their own planning and to look out for
who they're around and how they can enrich the lives
of those who are near to them.
And to look out for safety reasons and the underlying
causes for the real problems.
-: If I'm a student and I'm interested in working
at Midwest Roadside Safety Facility, how do I go about
making contact with he people that can help me
get that goal achieved?
-: Sure we've got a website and that's probably the easiest
way to generally get a hold of us and get a role in
the University directory's and things
so that's fairly straightforward but we take engineers,
Cody is a good example, Cody started working for us
when you were what, 18?
-: Yeah
-: So I mean you can, we've had, one of the thing's we do
is we kind of develop a lot of our engineers in house.
And so we have undergrad students do a line share
of our work and analyzing test data and as a matter of fact
we can't do it without our student workers.
Our full time staff is fairly small, the students
make up the majority of our staff.
So our students are the ones who put our candler audience
together for our systems, they're the ones that help us
analyze the test data, they're out there on test days
documenting tests, that's mostly the undergrad students
and then our graduate students are actually working on
projects, so, you know, undergraduate students that have
worked for me, we essentially, they come in and the
projects we're talking about that come through the pool
fund or through NASCAR or whatever these different groups
are, that find work with us.
They basically run those projects with our
mentorship for lack of a better term so we've had
students that essentially they're doing everything
from researching the background of the problem,
trying to talk with the sponsor and deal with them
they also update the sponsor on the progress,
they do the design work, they're out there on test day
very nervously watching to see if their system works.
You know and then they actually on the back end have to
write it up and report it and summarize it for the sponsors.
So, that, for us that's a big part of being a complete
engineer is hopefully, especially for the grad students
they get to see all the phases of an engineering problem
not just doing some research and giving it to a professor
ours is a little broader than that in the sense that
we work more like a specific engineer
for our research is more applied so,
a lot of things we do, they do a lot more direct, probably
interaction with clients then your average graduate student
at university so I think we give them a pretty good rep
and our students work all over the country.
-: I was just gonna ask that, where have some of your
students gone on to?
-: It's pretty amazing, they'll go all over
we have, just in the last few years, we've had guys
that are working at Sandia National Labs, at Caterpillar,
we've had guys go work for professional golf companies,
so it's kind of all over the map really
in engineering consultants.
-: Volkswagen, Volvo, John Deere, UP.
-: And large civil firms as well, because a lot of
the civil structural stuff ties very closely
with what we do, so yeah it's a pretty broad range
where those guys get to go and so it's,
we think it's a good opportunity form for sure.
-: Now you've mentioned solving problems is one of the
reason's you're in this, and the world keeps changing
all the time and technologies in every industry change
so it creates new problems and new opportunities.
What sorts of problems would you both like to see
solved or be a part of solving?
-: Sure, so I've got a couple ideas I'm sure Cody has
plenty too, like I said there's a lot of problems
always in this field, it constantly evolves.
One of the things in the general sense that
we're always trying to do is improve
the barriers that are on the side's of the roads
so that's obviously been one of our main focuses for years.
That problem doesn't go away because as the
vehicle fleet changes, and the needs of the state DOT's
and the highway oversight folks, change over time
so does the needs of the barriers.
So things that we're looking at over time is,
how do we design those barriers to better match up
with the vehicle fleet as it changes over time
you know right now vehicle's are heavier and have
higher center of gravities then they ever have.
We keep adapting our barriers to deal with those
and then we also have to keep dealing with small cars
and older vehicles in the fleet.
So we're trying to do that,
we're also trying to always make the barriers
more functional, more cost effective,
and better applied to whatever their specific needs are
at the state level, and then make them safer
on top of that, we always want the safety performance
to improve too so we're always looking at that
and then like you mentioned we're looking at
new technologies as well that go with that.
So as new materials come out, different ways to
construct those barriers, we're looking at things like
advanced precast bridge rails that we can assemble
more quickly then we can, like cast in place construction
that's typically been used.
We think there's new materials for guard rails
and other types of barriers that we can apply.
We're also looking at the future of barrier design
as vehicles and infrastructures start to communicate more
with network technologies.
There's vehicle structure communications that we can use
to potentially do things like smart barriers.
So instead of the first line off defense
when you run off the road being a physical barrier
there may be a smart barrier that actually communicates
with your vehicle, detects an impact and actually
tries to stear your vehicle away or change how the vehicle
responses before you actually hit something
off the side of the road.
And that's kind of the next generation of safety devices
and that's not two or three years away that's long-term
looking down the road, but those are the kind of things
that we're looking at in the future because we all see
that the cars are becoming more connected and they're
interacting with each other and they're detecting
collisions with each other.
Can we do the same kind of things with our infrastructure
and our safety barriers?
I think we can and that's probably a pretty big step
towards the future.
-: One of the things about he complete engineer initiative
that the university is stressing with the students is
life outside of being an engineer, you gotta have
a work life balance, so when you guys are not at the
Midwest Roadside Safety Facility, how do you unwind?
What kind of hobbies do you guys have?
-: Yeah for me, I have two children,
one's thirteen and one's nine so that's a pretty
busy hobby, most of the students that are listening
won't have children but you'll find out.
It's a real thing, so they keep me very busy,
between all their activities and things that we do with them
and then when you work, one thing about engineering is
it's somewhat of a desk job, so I like to get out
and run and bike whenever I get a chance to do that
kind of thing to keep safer from getting too old too fast.
-: And I know several of us do a lot of community service,
I'm active with my church and with different children's
groups around the area to help some underprivileged youth.
And that's where I spend an awful lot of my evenings,
helping out with these kids.
(bell rings)
-: Alright so what we like to do at the very end here
a lightning round series of question's, there's 60 seconds,
it's not an official time but,
-: Just have a little fun.
-: Just have a little bit of fun with it here,
since we have Bob and Cody here,
we're just gonna go from one to the next,
so we're gonna start with Cody, car or truck?
-: Truck.
-: Have you ever used a slide rule?
-: No.
-: First video game you owned?
-: Mario Brothers.
-: Favorite musical genre?
-: Punk rock.
-: How fast can you change a flat tire?
-: Ten minutes.
-: What was your favorite toy growing up?
-: Transformers.
-: If you could time travel, to when would you go?
-: Dawn of the United States.
-: On a scale of one to ten, how strict were your parents?
-: Six.
-: Do you know how to run a VCR?
-: (laughs) yes.
-: Favorite NASCAR driver?
-: Harvick 'cause I met him.
-: Chocolate or vanilla?
-: Oh, chocolate.
-: Saturday or Sunday?
-: Saturday for sure.
-: What's your pet peeve?
-: Drivers.
-: Pancakes or waffles?
-: Waffles.
-: Herbie Husker or Lil Red?
-: Herbie all the way.
-: Alright, alright we again want to thank Bob Bielenberg
and Cody Stolle for joining us from the
Midwest Roadside Safety Facility, you can learn more
about the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility at mwrsf.unl.edu
guy's thanks for coming.
-: Thank you guys.
-: Thank you for having us.
(piano music)
-: Thank you for listening to the
Complete Engineering Podcast,
for more information visit us at engineering.unl.edu.