Steering wheel design competition launched

7th January 2013 By: Idéle Esterhuizen

Speed enthusiasts from around the world have been called upon by the mechanical engineering community GrabCAD to design a steering wheel for supersonic cars, which could be used in future projects.

GrabCAD sales director Lauri Poldre told Engineering News Online that between 200 and 300 entries were expected and that the competition was aimed at promoting the Product Innovation (PI) Congress that will be held in Berlin, Germany, on February 19 and 20.

The designs are required to incorporate triggers to light up and increase rocket power and to shut it down. It must also include a button to deploy the airbrake and two buttons to deploy brake chutes.

Competitors would have until January 31 to submit their entries, which will be judged by representatives from the PI Congress, the Bloodhound supersonic car (SSC) project team, engineering software and cloud computing software company Altair, DEVELOP3D magazine and GrabCAD.

The winner would be announced at the PI Congress and would receive, among others, $1 000 in cash, a free pass to the PI Congress and a copy of Altair’s three-dimensional conceptual design software solidThinking Inspire.

Bloodhound SSC project spokesperson Jules Tipler told Engineering News Online that the winning designs would not be used in the Bloodhound SSC, which already had a “mature steering wheel design”.

Poldre noted, however, that the design competition would present “a great basis for future projects and a case study which will be presented at the PI Congress”.