The 2018 mechanical engineering design competition 2018: Container Handler
Freshman studying mechanical engineering have started their third and last design project for this academic year. The 77 project groups have now entered the fifth design week of this project and are going to apply the knowledge they have acquired: from exploring the problem via designing and building to testing and evaluating. On 20 June 2018 an important performance test will take place; the designs will compete against each other on Markt square in Delft. Afterwards, the teams can streamline their evaluation. Several days later, they will have to submit their mechanical engineering design report.
The brief: container handler
This year’s brief has a maritime flavour, which is why it was developed in consultation with Dingena Schott and Wouter van den Bos from the Department of Maritime & Transport Technology. The challenge is to design a container handler that can pick up, move and place a container in an exact area as quickly as possible. It may require hoisting the container over other containers.
After the container has been placed in its new position, the cycle will have to be repeated by retrieving and placing another container. The competition will judge the number of containers that can be moved and accurately placed within a certain amount of time. The handler has to meet a long list of design requirements that are summarised in the rules of the competition.
The following rules also apply:
- The playing field consists of a wooden board measuring 2.44 m x 0.61 m, which has a loading and unloading area marked on it.
- There are steel containers on the loading area. These are steel profiles measuring 100 mm x 100 mm x 3 mm. They have been sawed to a length of 240 mm.
- The containers have centring pins on the top side and centring holes on the bottom side.
- The steel containers have to be moved from the loading area to the unloading area.
- The loading and unloading areas are opposite each other.
- A scoring system will be used based on the sequence and method of stacking as shown in the illustration below.
- A lightweight design increases the performance score. Depending on the weight of the handler vis-à-vis the other participating handlers, a working handler will be awarded 0-10 bonus points.
The entire design brief and the rules can be found at: http://project.3me.tudelft.nl/container-handler/index.htm
Teamwork, among the teachers too
The preparations for this practical test already started in November with a meeting for all kinds of colleagues and students. There have been several discussions about potential ideas for the design brief, which were attended by Just Herder, Gerard van Vliet, René Delfos (P&E) and the students of GreenME (Thijs van Essen, Rick van den Brink, Quinten de Wit, Max de Groot) and Leeghwater, among others. Others who contributed include Peter Kohne, the faculty’s security advisor. The choice for a design had to be made before Christmas. That design was then elaborated on by the core lecturer team, consisting of Anton van Beek, Regine Vroom, Giuseppe Radaelli and Jos Knoester (PME). Bob van Vliet joined in to handle the final details of the brief. He also made the drawing of the scoring system.
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You can find all you need to know about last year’s design competition (2017) here:
<link onderwijs opleidingen bachelors wb bsc-werktuigbouwkunde ontwerpwedstrijd ontwerpwedstrijd-werktuigbouwkunde-2017>