University of Aberdeen and Dundee scoop awards at student motorsport event

Engineering students at the University of Aberdeen and University of Dundee are celebrating after winning awards at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ Formula Student event held this July.

Both teams won the awards for cars they designed and built from scratch. Aberdeen students picked up the Shell Award for the Most Fuel Efficient Car for the second year running and the team at Dundee won the E.ON UK Safety Award.

Daniel Ahrens, Project Manager of the Aberdeen team, said: “With fuel efficiency fast becoming an important selling point of vehicles, we carefully designed our car to maximise its power. After considering engine type and size, the team opted for a carburettor 450cc engine, while concentrating on keeping the car’s weight down to 210kg. We were really pleased as we managed to reduce the 2010 car’s weight by an impressive 45kg from the University’s 2009 car.”

The University of Dundee impressed judges by creating a ‘novel design’ using aluminium honeycomb for energy absorption. Its manual tests of the effects of an impact won the team the safety award for the first year.

Nick Brown, Marketing Manager, Graduate Recruitment, UK & Ireland at Shell International said: “Shell is proud to support an event that encourages young engineers to develop qualities and skills vital to meeting this challenge, such as creativity, collaboration and resilience. These are qualities at the heart of Shell’s graduate recruitment process and why we gain such value in our partnership with Formula Student.”

Formula Student is Europe’s biggest student motorsport event and was attended by more than 2,500 students from around 30 countries between 15-18 July at Silverstone racecourse, UK.

The IMechE Formula Student event uses the same rules as the Formula SAE series and this means student teams can enter their cars in the Formula SAE events, including those in the US, Australia and Germany.

Visit www.formulastudent.com for more information.

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