Student Competitions UK

The objectives of this international academic competition are: Promote the development of underwater gliders, involve the university students in underwater gliders design, optimize underwater gliders designs, obtain new ideas for future application of this vehicles.

This competition has an international scope and its main goal is the design of a small underwater glider concept radio controlled, according with the technical requirements of these rules, taking into account the future application of the underwater gliders in the scientific and business environments.

Ocean gliders are small underwater unmanned vehicles with very low energy consumption. They are able to cover great distances using only the energy of small and light batteries. Most underwater vehicles, like submarines, use a spinning propeller to move around in the water.

Propeller driven vehicles are fast, but they also require a lot of energy to maintain their speed. Underwater gliders move around by changing their buoyancy, that is, they change their density so that they alternate between more dense and less dense than the surrounding ocean water. This change in buoyancy causes the glider to rise and sink in the ocean.

As the underwater glider goes up and down, its wings give it a forward motion just like the wings on an airplane glider, which is why these devices are also called gliders. But airplane gliders can only “glide” as they fall downwards due to gravity. Underwater gliders can glide forward both as they rise and fall. In a typical configuration, the ocean glider changes its density by moving a small piston forward and back that increases and decreases its volume.

You may remember that you calculate the density of an object by taking its mass and dividing that by the object’s volume. Since the mass of the glider remains constant, all we need to do is change its volume. A small change in volume (about a half cup of water) is all the glider needs to change its density enough to rise and sink in the ocean. Other ideas and configurations will be welcomed in this competition.

Requirements for the participants:

Teams of all the universities worldwide are allowed to participate in the competition.

Each team should not exceed the number of 4 members.

All the participants must prove that they are currently students in a university, by means of a certificate. A copy of the certificate must be sent by e-mail during the registration phase.

Competition phases:

The teams should register sending an e-mail with the subject “UPM 2011 INTERNATIONAL ACADEMIC COMPETITION ON UNDERWATER GLIDERS DESIGN” to the address ocean_gliders.navales@upm.es, including the following table with the team information: Team name Country Coordinator Name University Postal address e-mail 2nd Member Name University Postal address e-mail 3rd Member Name University Postal address e-mail 4th Member Name University Postal address e-mail Copies of the certificates proving that all the members of the team are currently students in a university must be attached to the registration e-mail.

The company Dessault Systèmes, which sponsors the competition, will provide educational licences of its PLM systems to be used in the competition. The maximum number of licences provided to each team will be equal to the number of members of the team.

The licences will expire at the end of the phase 3 of the competition. For the 5 finalist teams the licences will be prorogued until the end of the competition.