Design projects are a fantastic way for universities to give their engineering students real-world experience of the challenges they will face in their professional lives. They’re also great for inspiring the next generation to take up engineering. This year, Warwick University took part in just such a project, encouraging eight of their most promising young engineers to build a human-powered submarine to take part in the International Submarine Race in the USA.
The challenge was simple enough, though the execution was anything but: namely, that the Warwick Sub team must design and manufacture a submarine capable of racing along a 100m course, using nothing but human power. The team would be competing against entrants from all over the world, many of whom had been entering the competition for years.
To make matters even harder, the university awarded the team a budget of just £1,600 – ensuring that they had to emulate real-world conditions where sourcing and controlling the budget is equally as important as perfecting the design. It is thanks to companies like WDS Component Parts providing sponsorship that the team was able to build a working submarine and win the competition’s innovation award.
“As a company, we are always keen to get involved in projects that show off the fun side of engineering,” says Phil Holyome, the main point of contact for the project at WDS. “As soon as we heard about this project, we wanted to be involved for a number of reasons. Obviously, it’s important to support the next generation of engineers as they come to the end of their education and enter into the professional world as our colleagues. But also we saw the underwater application as an excellent testing ground for the quality of our products.”
In order to keep transportation costs to a minimum, the team decided to build the submarine in a flat-pack design. This meant the chassis had to be easily detachable from the submarine body and that both components had to be collapsible to fit within the storage case. WDS worked with the team to specify a selection of fastening components that would allow the team to quickly reconstruct the submarine.
The result of the project was a storage footprint that was significantly smaller than that of the next smallest competitor and less than 50% of the average entrant. This was one of the key contributing factors that led to the team winning the award for innovation at the competition.
