News

ESTECO Academy Design Competition Winners Announced

9 June 2017

With 13 top-level projects from universities around the world qualifying for the competition, it was quite a tough decision for the jury to make. Now the verdict is in, we are ready to announce the winners of the ESTECO Academy Design Competition, held in partnership with Aprilia Racing and Gamma Technologies.

A total of 13 projects from 9 countries were submitted.
"We are truly impressed by the overall quality of the projects and by the variety of ideas. It is our honor to keep supporting the talented engineers of the future on their journey into the professional world through our ESTECO Academy program", said Enrico Nobile, Scientific Advisor at ESTECO. "The competition offers engineering students from all over the world the unique opportunity to apply leading professional technology to develop real-world solutions. Thanks to the partnership with Aprilia, the winner will get to experience the 'real world' of motorcycle engineering."

The jury - made up of three experts from ESTECO, Aprilia Racing and Gamma Technologies - judged the projects based on the following criteria: creativity (innovation vs. traditional solutions, predicted performance and justified improvements and applied methodologies). Due to the high quality of the projects the jury had a hard time deciding the final ranking. In the end, the jury decided to award two second prizes on the grounds that the two team projects, despite thedifferent approaches, were of equal merit.

Winners:

First prize goes to Michael Bambula (team name Kyle Beggs) from the University of Florida, US. Michael took the podium with his top-notch design project which achieved a significant performance improvements (64.2 hp @16500 rpm) while developing a complete model for a Moto3 bike and realistic simulations that took also the race track into consideration. The jury particularly appreciated the comprehensive approach and the rigorous methodology adopted by the team.

Two teams tied for second place: the CTU Racing team from the Czech Technical University in Prague Czech Republic (Pavel Myslik, Ivo Vodicka, Petr Vacha) and the FESB Racing team from the University of Split, Croatia (Toni Šantić, Roko Mamic, Ivo Marinić-Kragić, Domagoj Šanić, Dino Dodig)

The CTU Racing team proposed a pneumatic valve spring, integrating many simulation tools and achieving a remarkable performance (59,2hp@15.000 rpm). The jury appreciated the creative design and the inputs taken from their experience in developing race components.

The FESB Racing team investigated optimal engine configuration and considered the placement/installation on the bike. While performance improvements were lower (50hp @14000 rpm) the jury valued the interesting analysis on power/torque use and the advanced flow analysis (3D CFD).

Congratulations to the winning teams in Florida, Split and Prague! We look forward to meeting you at the Award ceremony to be held on July 21st at the Aprilia Racing HQs in Noale, Italy.

Special thanks go to all the teams who took part in the competition with their submissions. Congratulations to you all for your high-quality projects and fresh ideas! Well done!

Here's a full list of the other qualified participants:

Team

Members

University

B&FC Motorsport

Lewis Cork, Jason Moffat

B&FC College UK

Deep Throttle

Fabio Effretti, Marco Argese, Francesco Alberti

Politecnico di Torino Italy

Final Formula

James Founds, William Duncan, David Pick II

University of Idaho, US

Mangurria Racing

Adrián Jesús Femia Marcos

University of Valladolid, Spain

Moto-Maqlab-UC3

Sergio Hernandez, Antonio Molla Carcano, Raul Key Sanchez

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain

Overrev

Tim Weinheimer

TU Braunschweig, Germany

Paru Team

Luca Parussini

University of Trieste, Italy

Team Apache

Sneha Rupa Nampally

Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpu, India

Team Penno

Davide Villa, Giuseppe Perra, Alberto Vallebona

Politecnico di Torino, Italy

UoMEngines

Adrian Camilleri, Carl Caruana, Jean-Paul Farrugia

University of Malta, Malta

The Award Ceremony for the ESTECO Academy Design Competition will be held on July 21st at the Aprilia Racing HQs in Noale, Italy. The winning teams will spend the day at the Aprilia headquarters and labs, where they will have the chance to see engineers working on engine simulations and design, test benches, assembling, electronics, quality control and more.

The winner will also get the chance to enjoy a 6-month internship at Aprilia Racing. Each member of the winning teams will also get one year free ESTECO Academy membership.​