AnalySwift sponsors SAMPE 2023 Student Bridge and Fuselage Contests

 

AnalySwift LLC (West Lafayette, Ind., U.S.), a provider of efficient, high-fidelity modeling software for composites and other advanced materials, has announced its sponsorship of the SAMPE 2023 Student Bridge Contest and Student Fuselage Contest. 

Hosted by the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering (SAMPE, Diamond Bar, Calif., U.S.), the Student Bridge Contest enables students to design, build and test a miniature structural bridge using various composite materials in accordance with a set of well-defined rules. Students design and build a composites bridge using an assortment of pultrusions, cores, fabrics and other materials supplied to them in kit form.

The Student Fuselage Contest offers students the opportunity to design and build a composite fuselage using an assortment of fiberglass, phenolic honeycomb core and resin-filling core. The contests provide several benefits to participating students, namely, putting their composites training into action, representing their college or university and resume-building. Furthermore, this is an international competition involving schools from around the globe. Winners receive monetary prizes and a contest trophy. 

“With participation worldwide, these contests are an excellent opportunity for students interested in pursuing a career in advanced composites,” Allan Wood, president and CEO of AnalySwift, says. “AnalySwift is pleased to offer student teams free access to the VABS composite simulation software for the Student Bridge Contest and SwiftComp for the Student Fuselage Contest.” 

“VABS helps accelerate students’ design and analysis with its rigorous modeling of slender composite structures, such as bridges,” Wood continues. “For instance, VABS quickly calculates accurate bending stiffness, neutral axis, extension stiffness, failure index and strength ratios. Students can use VABS on a typical laptop computer to calculate the ply-level details with the accuracy of 3D FEA in seconds. SwiftComp, on the other hand, is a general-purpose, truly multiscale modeling code for composites. It directly and seamlessly links detailed microstructure and structural behavior for composite structures including beams, plates/shells and 3D structures.” 

This will be the 24th year SAMPE has hosted the events, which will be held April 19, 2023, at the SAMPE 2023 Conference & Exhibition in Seattle, Washington. For more information on the contests, including how student teams can access the VABS or SwiftComp software, visit the SAMPE Student Bridge Contest webpage and the SAMPE Student Fuselage Contest webpage, respectively. 

“With continuous development funded by the U.S. Army and other agencies spanning over 30 years for performance and robustness, VABS’ accuracy has been extensively verified,” Dr. Wenbin Yu, CTO of AnalySwift, contends. “Since the last contest, a new framework called iVABS is also available, which was developed by Purdue University with the support of the U.S. Army. iVABS enables VABS in a user-friendly way for design and optimization, parametric studies, uncertainty quantifications, etc.”