The mechanical engineering first and second year students representing 17 universities from Australia, Malaysia and New Zealand came together head to head to compete for the coveted 2016 Warman Design and Build Competition in Sydney on 23-25 September 2016.
The Warman competition has been proudly sponsored by Weir Minerals and organised by Engineers Australia for 29 years.
The competition provides students a rare opportunity to practice hands on engineering design skills. Students also participate in a site tour of Weir Minerals and walk through the full production cycle of a leading global engineering company specialised in the design and manufacture of highly-engineered products and services for minerals, oil and gas, and power industries.
Around 80 of the brightest students representing 17 universities competed over the two days. These included Deakin University, Flinders University, Griffith University, James Cook University, Monash University Clayton, Monash University Malaysia, RMIT University, University of Adelaide, University of Auckland, University of Canterbury, University of Melbourne, University of Newcastle, University of South Australia, University of Southern Queensland, University of Wollongong, UNSW Canberra and University of Technology Sydney.
View the league table here. Approximately 2,300 students are involved in the program each year with 15-20 teams competing in each university to win the chance to progress to the National Final in Sydney.
Students had to plunge into the atmosphere of fantastic thriller as the competition required them to build a mechanical system to deliver a payload across a series of hurdles in order to resupply the fictional people of Gondwana, a small planet on the outer fringes of our Galaxy who have been devastated by a series of Gondwanaquakes (earthquakes to us). These crucial supplies could only be delivered across a wide and dangerous RAVINE which requires an ingenious mechanical solution. Competing in heats at their universities only the team with the best ideas and execution progressed to the finals.
On competition day, the tension and excitement in teams and the crowd gathered was palpable. Overall, 15 of 17 teams scored at least one perfect delivery so the standard of designs was exceptional, as was consistency at the top end. There were very few malfunctions or crashes to the disappointment of the crowd.
2016 Warman Design and Build Competition National Final winners:
First Prize: Monash University Clayton
Second Prize: University of Newcastle
Third Prize: RMIT University
Weir Judges Award: UNSW Canberra
NCED “Best Design” Award: Monash University Clayton
In addition to the track performance based awards (1st, 2nd and 3rd) a panel of Weir Minerals Judges who observe the competition gives an award. As a preface to announcing their award at the awards dinner, they made the following comments:
"Firstly, let me acknowledge the efforts of all the students involved with the 2016 Warman Design and Build Competition. I've been a judge at a number of these events, and I think this year saw probably the largest number of successful runs. It was also perhaps one of the hardest events to judge, mainly due to the closeness of the competition. Every engineer knows that the best learning happens when you break things, so it was somewhat disappointing to see a minimal number of thrills and spills today, but perhaps that's something Warren Smith and Craig Wheeler can work on for next year.
In choosing the Weir Minerals award, as every year, we do not necessarily choose the team that performed the best, but one that displayed the innovation skills that we would like to see in professional engineers. Interestingly, the judges seemed to favour designs that did not leave half of the machine behind, suggesting repeatability of the process, and perhaps a little environmental awareness. We were quite impressed by the University of Adelaide with their very tidy design execution and their innovative custom corkscrew wheels to allow them to navigate across rough parts of the track, but an unsuccessful second run put a slight damper on things. UTS with their interesting gripper device and Griffith University with their attractive, simple and reliable (albeit slow) design also deserve note.
However the judges’ final unanimous decision was for a team that presented a machine unlike no other with a very cleanly executed pneumatic system combined with minimal mechatronic components. The rules of the competition include stringent compliance requirements for storing energy using compressed air, so the courage of this design team in navigating the compliance requirements to the satisfaction of the organisers, was notable. All the practicing engineers in the room know compliance is something that consumes all of us to a large degree every day, and it's often easy to choose a different path with fewer hoops to jump through, to try and ease the pain.
Also notable of this team's design is that as I understand it, the ladies who ran the device on competition day were not actually part of the design team. They stepped in at the last minute to replace the team who could not attend. It's testament to the design and build especially that it did not require “the master's touch” to operate- for a proof of concept that's a great achievement. Added to that, they had two flawless, impressive to watch runs. We present the weir minerals award to the UNSW Canberra team for their device codenamed FedEx."
A final award is also presented by members of the Engineers Australia National Committee on Engineering Design for “design”. In prefacing their announcing their award at the awards dinner, the NCED spokesman made the following comments.
“You may well ask why we judge design. Surely the best design will win on the track? Well, I’m not going to speculate just now on whether that has been the case today. What is design? Well I have just clocked over 30 years of engineering design experience and I’m still not entirely sure. If you Google the word “design” you’ll get a huge range of definitions. But in my view it includes things like maintainability, cost of ownership, reliability – cradle to grave factors. And these may not be apparent from a couple of runs down the track. Another vague term used by design engineers is “design elegance”. This encompasses all of these things, but overarching it is about doing more with less. Less is more - which equates to simplicity. This was the focus of the judges. This year the judges have been hugely impressed by the standard. Every team here can be proud of what they have achieved. And to do this as second year students is deeply impressive.
A few of the standout design features that the judges noted:
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Griffith – Extraordinary presentation – a work of art. A device that should go into the Powerhouse Museum as state-of-the-art 3D printing circa 2016.
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Deakin – also a beautifully resolved design.
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Auckland – used laser cut slot and tab construction for ease of disassembly and transport – quite important when you’re coming from across the ditch. They also had an innovative grab-from-the-front claw that saved them time in the sprint to the finish.
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Similarly, UTS had a very nice claw mechanism.
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UNSW Canberra had a very nice compressed air projector arm that got their payload to the finish more quickly and accurately.
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Somewhat similarly USQ used a gravity powered cart with travel limited by a cable and utilising one-way clutches that prevented bounce back which they demonstrated during their second run today.
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Newcastle had a very novel “duck scoop” that obviated the need for raising and lowering and clamping to engage the bar. Engaged purely by inertia of the vehicle, this is the sort of simplicity that impresses the judges.
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RMIT used an inertia activated fold-down platform that limboed under the bar
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Adelaide University’s device had very innovative spiral groove wheel that allowed them to traverse the ripple strips smoothly.
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Canterbury had a great example of a leave-behind bar traverser with very nice electrical quick-disconnect contactors.
But the team that put together the best overall design was Monash Clayton. It wasn’t the prettiest, but it was brutally effective. Utilising a duck scoop feature like Newcastle’s – which they termed “the ice-pick” it was very simple. They analysed the dynamics of each transition and then designed to minimise the time of each. They used a wheelie bar fitted with a brake shoe to provide maximum deceleration on impacting the bar. They reversed drive motor polarity for maximum deceleration at the finish and used a guide bar with a roller to guide them to the finish square. So today it was an example of the best design being fastest on the day. So our congratulations go to Monash Clayton on winning the Design Award.”
Next year we will celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the Warman Design and Build Competition and we invite and encourage even more Australian Universities to participate.
Please contact [email protected] for further details.