Institution news
Judge Malcolm Foster from GKN Aerospace explains why Queen’s University Belfast won the award at this year’s UAS Challenge, together with key points for teams to bear in mind during the design and validation stages of their 2021 UAS.
"The Design Award is awarded to the team that scores best on an aggregate of the Concept Paper, Preliminary Design Review, and Critical Design Review submissions. Each of these is scored on criteria including the design process, project management, innovation, analysis, costs, safety, manufacturing, and test, and how clearly the understanding of that is expressed by the team. Thus the Design Award is as much about understanding the process as the product.
"Queen’s University Belfast did an excellent job of describing and following , a robust design process throughout the year, including robust requirements management. They received the highest scores in both the concept paper and the PDR, and ranked very high in the CDR, where they were particularly strong in their detailed structural analysis and aerodynamic design of the airframe, and their systems design - in particular the propulsion design and analysis.
"This was by no means an easy win, as Queen’s had very stiff competition from Huddersfield, Bangladesh, and Southampton in particular, who each demonstrated real strengths at different points in the year. Queen’s succeeded through consistently scoring very high all through the year.
"It’s not entirely about the design process, though, and it’s important to recognize that their hard work has also resulted in what would likely be a very competitive aircraft design in any normal year."