Overall victory and innovation award for TU Darmstadt (PtU) teams at student competition “Steel Flies!” in Düsseldorf
2019/07/05
This year's student competition “Steel Flies!” was held on 25th and 26th June at METEC fair in Düsseldorf. Fourteen teams from five German universities and the Ain Shams University from Cairo/Egypt competed against each other to achieve the longest flight distance and flight duration with a flying object made purely out of steel.
On the first day of the competition at the Technical University of Dortmund, the teams first presented the developments and concepts behind their flying objects. This was followed by a lively exchange during a comfortable barbecue evening at the Institute for Forming Technology and Lightweight Construction (IUL). A guided tour through the test field caused lots of discussions. The actual flight competition started the next day in Hall 6 of the Düsseldorf Exhibition Centre as part of METEC, an international metallurgy trade fair. The flying objects could be dropped from a height of around 10 meters. The flying objects were subject to the following criteria: Production from materials consisting of at least 70 % iron, adherence to a total weight of 400 g maximum. In addition, the flying objects had to be placed in a cube with an edge length of one meter. Moreover, a budget of 300 € was provided to the individual teams. In the competition a minimum flight duration was to be reached, afterwards the flight distance and duration were weighted and converted in a total score.
In the final evaluation, Team Darmstadt 3 was able to assert themselves with their concept of a paraglider. With an average flight time of 7.5 seconds and a flight distance of almost 30 meters, which was achieved continuously over 5 attempts, the team secured the 1st prize money of 400 €. In addition, their concept was awarded the Innovation Prize, which is endowed with a further 200 €. Furthermore, Team Darmstadt 1 could reach the 3rd place with their glider pilot and happily received a money prize of 200 €. Team Darmstadt 2 unfortunately did not make it up to the podium with its concept of a glider pilot. After this very successful year, we are looking forward to the next competition and hope to defend the podium.
The competition is organized by the Institut für Bildsame Formgebung (ibf) in Aachen in cooperation with the participating research institutes and financially supported by FOSTA (Forschungsvereinigung Stahlanwendung e. V.). We would like to thank the sponsors for the beautiful event and hope to be able to start next year with many students!
