Posted on August 27, 2015
Five mechanical and materials engineering students, supervised by Professor Il Yong Kim, recently traveled to San Paolo, Brazil for a two week international conference and design competition hosted by industry leaders in the computer aided engineering and automotive sector.
The design competition and conference was hosted by PACE (Partners for the Advancement of Computer-aided Engineering), with the most notable sponsors being General Motors and Siemens. The PACE Annual Forum spanned two weeks, half being software training and half being the conference and design competition. Over 350 students and professors from around the world, ranging from India to Germany, China, Brazil, Korea and more gathered to learn, compete and network together, under the guidance of industry leaders. Each team, made up of several schools, was tasked with designing a reconfigurable, shared-use, mobility vehicle for urban environments.
The Queen’s team, consisting of Paul Ehvert, Madeleine Neiman, Jon Wong and Ryan Williams (Mechanical, 2015), joined by Christopher Carrick, (Mechanical, M.A.Sc), was first established as a MECH 460/462 project team, created and supervised by Professor Il Yong Kim of the Mechanical Engineering Department. For the PACE project, they were part of a larger team composed of 5 other schools; Sungkyunkwan University (Korea), Korea University (Korea), Inha University (Korea), PSG College of Technology (India) and National Institute of Design (India). Together they competed against seven other teams.
The Forum spanned two weeks; the first week was filled with intensive training for many different CAE software packages, including Siemens NX 10 and Teamcenter as well as Altair Hyperworks. The Queen’s team participated in these trainings and closed off the week by taking a certification exam for Siemens NX 10. The training payed off, because all five students passed the certification exam with flying colours and are now officially certified in NX 10.
The second week of the forum consisted of the competition portion, and several conference talks on many different subject. The goal of the competition was to design a reconfigurable, shared-use mobility vehicle for urban environments. The schools in each team worked together, combining industrial design expertise, engineering knowledge and manufacturing know-how, to produce a final design, which they had to present to industry judges from GM and Siemens. Each team needed to produce a scale model of their final design to illustrate its looks and function, as well as give two big presentations; one overview of all aspects of the vehicle and one regarding the industrial design process. Following these was an intensive question period with GM employees and managers. The conference talks were given by many different people, including GM and Siemens employees as well as experts from around the world on many different topics.
The week ended with a banquet, celebrating all the hard work and success enjoyed by the teams, and closed out with an awards ceremony. The team received the third place award for Customer Insight, along with their Certification awards for NX.
The Queen’s team greatly enjoyed the PACE Annual Forum, and had the opportunity to explore and experience the city and culture of San Paolo in the process. Many new friends from around the world were made and contacts and networks were created.
