UA inventor rides bumpy road to success

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Is this parking spot classified Zone One? Members of the Engineering Club use a modified jeep to find some free parking on campus last year outside the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering building. The jeep won them an award in the BF Goodrich's collegiate inventors program.

We're not talking spoilers and decals here - Burke, a former University of Arizona mechanical engineering major, invented a novel rear suspension system that allows the car to bound over rocks 3 feet high.

He said he loves the adrenaline rush of riding rugged trails in the desert surrounding Tucson.

"You know the feeling when you're just driving down the street and someone comes out of nowhere and almost wipes you out - it's like that," Burke said.

Burke earned the adulation of off-roaders everywhere when he won a national inventors competition last summer for engineering the system that allows his Jeep to crunch over the roughest terrain.

The design is patentable, but Burke, who designs space equipment for the UA, would need $25,000 to pay lawyer and patent fees.

"I could probably build them and sell them," Burke said.

When he showed his Jeep to the Tucson Rough Riders, a local group of aggressive off-roaders, "they all wanted one," Burke said.

Aerospace and mechanical engineering professor Rudolph Eisentraut called it one of the most outstanding designs he's seen - and he's seen plenty.

Eisentraut, who also engineers missiles for the Raytheon company, teaches the mechanical engineering class for which Burke and his counterparts designed the suspension system.

"He (Burke) deserves a lot of credit for this," Eisentraut said. "He's sort of an unassuming individual and you don't realize what he's capable of."

The BF Goodrich chemical and aerospace company found Burke's Jeep spectacular enough to select him and his teammates from more than 50 undergraduate competitors as winners of its collegiate inventors contest last summer.

Teammate Tamas Andor was fooling around on the World Wide Web when he found the competition. Burke and Andor, along with team members Masayoshi Tsukioka and Won Joon Chang, designed an axle that can separate from the Jeep's chassis.

The back wheels drop up to 3 feet so the tires never leave the ground.

A good suspension system typically gives about 6 inches, which means riding over boulders will lift the back wheels off the ground, risking roll-over.

Andor, Tsukioka and Chang acted as math and physics experts for the project, calculating numbers to determine the breaking points in the suspension system.

"They pretty much set me loose" in terms of design, said Burke, who was responsible for building the system.

Despite the safety of their own engineering, Burke's teammates didn't always have faith in his driving when they tested their invention on desert trails.

"Dave (Burke) is used to doing this and he took these guys out there and he'd turn around and they were gone - they bailed on him!" Eisentraut said.

On its fourth trial run, a bearing broke and the team was stranded in the desert for four hours in a downpour.

"I had the top down and this nice new interior and it got soaked," Burke said.

Still, the trials and tribulations of invention had a terrific payoff.

"They (BF Goodrich) flew us to Akron (Ohio) to wine and dine us," Burke said.

The UA designers attended the 1998 National Inventors Hall of Fame Induction Weekend, where they hobnobbed with engineering mavens such as Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the computer mouse and a woman who concocted a cure for leukemia.

"I'm amazed that we won," said Eisentraut, who tucked his $1,000 of prize money into a "Hawaii fund" for himself and his wife.

Eisentraut was thrilled about the win.

"One of the things it does for us is put our program on a national level," he said. "It's the student initiative that made it happen, but we all get to brag about it."

Burke's success in Akron spurred him to try his luck elsewhere. He was just informed by Design News magazine that his suspension system was chosen out of hundreds of entrants as one of 15 finalists. He eagerly anticipates a visit from a judge who will determine the winners.

"I'm going to take him out to the desert and scare the hell out of him," Burke said.

Sarah Spivack can be reached via e-mail at Sarah.Spivack@wildcat.arizona.edu.