Brunel's second year students are heading to Institution of Mechanical Engineers Design Challenge finals in October
Second year Brunel students won IMechE Design Challenge for the Greater London region for the third year running last week, taking them through to the national final in October.
The Year 2 challenge brief required the teams to design and build an autonomous device to climb the outside of a copper pipe and pause at intermediate places in order to collect bonus points against the stopwatch (60 points max). The teams also had to make a team presentation and a poster.
'Brunel A' comprising Mark Galea, Tara Thorpe and Hishaam Zubai-Sheikh were crowned 2019 GLR Champions due to an outstanding device performance in the final, and a second Brunel team, 'Brunel B', made up of Yaxye Ali, Mohammad Jaji, Jonathan Pownall, Alex Bandarian and Maks Lugovoy won the Best Design Award and came third in the final.
Professor Mark Atherton congratulated the teams: “It could so easily have been Brunel first and second but for gremlins causing unexpected device faults. Our posters and presentations were also of a very high quality. This is the third year running that Brunel has won, and no other university has won this event yet. Our undoubted strength is thanks in no small part to all the other Brunel teams who provided great competition over previous weeks to push these teams to the limit of performance.”
We also had two teams go through to the Year 1 finals, they designed and built devices that climb and descend the outside of a pipe, in the quickest time possible, simulating a lifting device. Jack Pledger, Irfan Khalid, Aravinthan Kirubaharan, Adnan Mohamed and Pedro Neves Da Mata De Brito who made up Team A took third place out of 12 teams. They were presented their award by Ben Hodgkinson, Head of Engineering, Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains, who heads up the group who develops the engines and chassis for Mercedes F1 cars.
Dr Peter Hewitson said: “This is tremendous result for our first year students, who’ve only been with us for just over six months. I look forward to see what they can achieve in a year’s time. Keep up the great work!”
Congratulations to everyone who took part and a big thank you to everyone in the Mechanical and Aerospace Department who have supported our teams this year.
We will be rooting for our Brunel team in the finals!