Season 3 Episode 9: From Classroom to Competition - The Design Challenge

Impulse To Innovation

Throughout this year Helen has attended several of the Institution’s challenge events in which students from across the UK and internationally, come together to compete for some of engineering’s most converted prizes and titles. This month she was able to travel to IMechE HQ and meet up with the teams, judges and sponsors at one of these competitions, the final of the Design Challenge.

The Design Challenge gives first and second year undergraduates a taste of ‘real world’ engineering, challenging them to design, create, present and run a device to a strict technical specifications. The completion is intended to complement their academic studies and has been incorporated into several university degree courses as part of their project modules. The Challenge is open to teams of up to five students. These teams compete in local regional competitions from March to May, leading to a national final for the regional winners hosted at the Institution at the start of the following academic year.

The challenge is made up of four key elements:

• The design, build and test of a device to compete with other teams
• Production of a poster to publicise the team’s work - demonstrating the team’s ability to sell their design solution
• A short presentation explaining the design and development of the device - demonstrating the team’s verbal ability
• A peer review where all students have the chance to vote for the best engineered solution to the problem

This year the students were tasked with building a line launcher, based on those used for RAS systems on naval vessels. Despite the first year teams only having £30 to spend on their design, the quality and level of construction of the devices were way beyond expectations and the competition was extremely close; coming down to a matter of a few points between the teams on the final scores.

Between the presentations and heats Helen chatted to Tim Baker, Chair of the Design Challenge completion. Founder of the Design Challenge and chair of the northeast regional competition David Ball. Bridget Ogwezi Senior Academic Development Manager at ANSYS UK and Ioanna Pierou, Mechanical Design Placement Student, from Red Bull Powertrains Limited and previous competator in the challenge.

Useful Links:

How to enter the Design Challenge

Winners of the 2022 Design Challenge

online courses & software provided by the competition sponsors

We would love to hear your thoughts and comments on this episode. If you would like to get in touch, email us at [email protected]

You can find more information about the work of the IMechE at www.imeche.org