TU Engineering Department Helps Develop New Ford F-150

If you plan on hitting the road in one of the new 2015 Ford F-150s, you can thank the Engineering Department at The University of Tulsa.

Faculty and students there have been helping the company with the new design and Friday got a real life look at the finished product.

It's a project that's been six years in the making, and Friday, students on the TU campus got to check out the results.

From the lab to the street, the mechanical engineering program at TU is putting their student research to work.

The latest completed project is the new 2015 all aluminum Ford F-150 which was shown on campus Friday.

Professor John Henshaw organized the partnership and said the department's focus was on safety and durability.

"But essentially under the hood, the ability of the aluminum to do its job and to protect the passengers in the event of a crash and to stay on the road for ten to 15 years, you know, basically the typical life of a car. I would say we had some small parts to play in that," Henshaw said.

Students, like David Wright, said they were happy to be a part of those small parts.

"If there's ever a point where the material is shown to be unsafe, we're the ones to be able to tell Ford the vehicles will be unsafe ten years down the road and they can make the safety modifications accordingly. So it's very cool to be on the front line of that research," Wright said.

"This is why people become engineers. To get the thrills you get from seeing these products actually you know in the flesh and see them in the real world," Henshaw said.

He said the department has been very lucky and typically sends a group of students every year to intern with Ford and he hopes to continue the partnership well into the future.