Georgia Tech students win first place in national design competition

Dassault Systems (DS) recently announced that DELMIA V5 and CATIA PLM solutions were used to design a training helicopter that took first place in the 2006 23rd Annual Student Design Competition.

The Georgia Tech team chose PLM solutions by Dassault Systèmes to help them work more efficiently and cost-effectively. The competition challenged entrants to design a two-seat, single-engine turbine training helicopter. Participants were to assume that no current turbine engines met the project's specific requirements, especially its cost constraints.

The Georgia Tech team focused on simplifying the process used to build the vehicle and its systems and subsystems. The students deployed DELMIA V5, DELMIA Process Engineer, DELMIA QUEST and CATIA to design the helicopter and create a manufacturing plan. CATIA models served as the foundation for fuselage design and structural analysis, weight estimation, component integration, cockpit layout and engine design. The engine models developed in CATIA were also used in DELMIA to plan and evaluate the product, processes and resources required for the design.

The Georgia Tech team used a DS PLM approach that capitalizes on the capabilities of state-of-the-art manufacturing analysis tools. The students were then able to optimize the process and resources required to produce the vehicle by creating an integrated computer aided design and manufacturing (CAD-CAM) environment that improved efficiency and quality, and reduced production costs.

The competition, sponsored by the American Helicopter Society (AHS) and Bell Helicopter, was open to all graduate and undergraduate students. Teams were evaluated and judged on technical content, application and feasibility, originality and organization. The Georgia Institute of Technology Design team won first place in the graduate level category.