Beyond Gasoline: A Comparative Study of E85 and Electric Shuttle Alternatives

Transportation systems on university campuses play a vital role in achieving sustainability and carbon neutrality goals. Embry Riddle Aeronautical University’s (ERAU) Daytona Beach campus operates a shuttle service designed to transport students efficiently between the main campus, residential complexes, and the MicaPlex. The current gasoline internal combustion shuttle fleet contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, highlighting the need for cleaner and more efficient propulsion systems. This study compares the cost, emissions, and viability of transitioning the current gasoline-driven fleet to E85 or electric to further the university’s commitment to sustainable development. Through a literature review of fleet adoption studies, regional fuel availability analysis, and lifecycle comparisons of E85, gasoline, and electric vehicles using ERAU’s shuttle routes to model operational performance and energy use, this study examines viable strategies for advancing sustainable and resilient transportation on campus. Evaluation metrics included vehicle fuel compatibility, infrastructure requirements for powering electric vehicles, fuel sourcing, and emissions output data. Findings indicate that E85 and electric powered vehicles can reduce lifecycle carbon emissions significantly, though such reductions may come with higher initial infrastructure and vehicle costs. The benefits of both E85 and electric adoption include reduced dependence on fossil fuels and lower greenhouse emissions across the operating lifecycle of the fleet. Ultimately, this study provides a framework for transitioning campus transportation toward cleaner energy systems, paving the way for greater environmental stewardship and long-term sustainability at Embry-Riddle

Determining critical vehicle connectivity in connected autonomous vehicles using information theory

The idea of connected autonomous vehicles, which can share information among themselves, offers the potential to enhance traffic efficiency. However, putting this technology into practice comes with challenges. Real-world challenges such as data throughput limitations can make it hard for vehicles to share information smoothly. Consequently, it becomes crucial to identify critical vehicle connectivity, which specifies the minimum number of connected vehicles required to maintain stable traffic flow. This paper proposes an information-theoretic metric that uses information flow among connected vehicles to identify critical vehicle connectivity. The model-free nature of information-theoretic tools eliminates the need for closed-form expressions of the model, which are necessary for stability analysis methods to identify critical connectivity. We demonstrate our proposed approach using a recent connected vehicles model. To the best of our knowledge, this paper presents the first application of information theory for analyzing critical vehicle connectivity in the context of connected autonomous vehicles

Coffee Break

Individual discussions

Breakfast in Duva

Team discussions of closure of goals and needs

Liquid Rocket Engine Thermal Analysis

Heat sink engines serve as a starting point for engine and injector development. They work by absorbing and dissipating heat into the chamber. While not utilized for flight, the design process for heat sinks is far simpler than that for ablative or regeneratively cooled engines. Test fires of Heat sink engines will provide the necessary data to validate injector design and chamber geometry. The most important detail of a test is how safe it is. The engine design plays a key role in this, but so does the test duration. Heat sinks are limited in how long they can fire based on the property of the material it is made of. Maximizing test duration while maintaining safety is crucial for teams wanting to test their engine and collect the most data from it. However, no software is available for teams to run thermal analysis to determine their test duration. The software developed in this project aims to fill that gap. A critical component of the thermal analysis is a stop condition. At first glance, one might think that the stop condition is when the material melts but due to a non uniform temperature gradient in the chamber thermal stresses will become very large and upon cool down will not go away entirely causing the engine to crack, if this happens and a team does not know they could attempt to fire their engine again and the crack could cause the chamber to blow up. Transient thermal analysis is run using a numeric solution in MATLAB\u27s partial differential equation toolbox. The analysis is run for a small time step, then reads the temperature of the nodes to determine if it has reached a critical temperature; if so, the solver will stop and report back the time at which the chamber reaches critical temperature, if it has not reached critical temperature then another time step is solved and the process repeats. The software allows users to input their own engine geometry and thermal data from Rocket Propulsion Analysis, a commonly used program to determine chamber geometry and propellant flow rate requirements. This software will be experimentally validated through the test firing of a 3001bf Lox/Ethanol heat sink engine. The engine will use an additively manufactured impinging doublet injector for simplicity and will have radial and axial thermal couples to validate the heat transfer model and stop conditions. Once validated, the software will be available to any team wishing to run a thermal analysis on their engine to allow for the safest test which yields the most amount of data

Where Earth Speaks

This is a group of poems about nature, emotion, humanity and reflection

Global Footprint Fair

Meet faculty leading Summer 2026 programs, compare destinations and curricula, and map a path to your own international experience