Engineering students with a love of motorcycles and racing have an opportunity to earn a six-month internship with Aprilia Racing, thanks to a simulation and design competition offered through ESTECO Academy.
Organized in a partnership between ESTECO Academy, Aprilia Racing and Gamma Technologies, the competition is open to undergraduate and graduate engineering students worldwide.
The challenge involves improving the performance of a four-stroke, single-cycle engine through multidisciplinary optimization of either the sub-components of the engine or the entire engine system.
Teams should use their knowledge of engineering principles to create the greatest improvement to the engine’s performance possible while respecting the constraints and baseline configuration of the engine model.
The judges are particularly interested in designs providing significant improvements in energy usage and sustainability.
Overall, the competition’s objectives are the same as other student competitions: to encourage engineering students to innovate and create. In this case, the competition aims to draw engineering students into high-quality prototyping, design and engine manufacturing processes, and to give them a chance to practice and polish their skills in numerical analysis, simulation and testing.
Teams will work with modelFRONTIER and 1-D simulation of the engine system with GT Suite, both of which will be provided by the partner companies. The use of other software tools for simulation and analysis, such as MATLAB, CAD tools or 3D CFD tools, is allowed but not mandatory.
The challenge begins with the engine specifications for the team to work with in their design. Teams take these specifications and work to optimize the 1-d engine model by identifying constraints to the problem and developing solutions to achieve the best engine performance possible.
First prize is a six-month internship with Aprilia Racing, where engineering students can build valuable experience toward their future careers. First and second place winners will also enjoy a tour of the Aprilia RC headquarters and labs and a one-year membership to the ESTECO Academy.
Submissions are currently open until November 30th, 2016.
Interested students can find all the details and submission guidelines on the competition page here.