The ‘Race For The Line’ competition

As part of BMT's commitment to STEM, BMT is working in association with the Learning Partnership, The Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy to sponsor local schools and encourage STEM engagement. 

BMT recently visited one of these schools, ‘Three Rivers Academy in Walton-on-Thames, UK to teach 200+ Year 7 students the basics of aerodynamics.  The day started at the school with the introduction and the launch of a 6-week ‘Race For The Line’ competition, before setting the students the challenge to make and race miniature cars that were NOT aerodynamic so that they could understand ‘what not to do’ for the real competition. 

The ‘Race For The Line’ competition will see the students model rocket powered cars in CAD, and then build and race them at national level.  The key challenges for the student teams over the next 6 weeks will be:

• to shape the foam block into the most aerodynamic and lightweight shape possible within the safety guidelines and rules,
• to create efficient wheels and axles that are safe and strong and meet size limits. Teams may use laser cutting to 3D printing to make wheels
• to develop a precision timing solution to measure the performance of their cars,
• to devise and carry out tests to evaluate, refine and improve their designs.

BMT has a long history of wind engineering using wind tunnel testing and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CDF), supported by specialist state-of-the art instrumentation and data acquisition systems.   Our teams use physical modelling based external wind effect analysis for complex large scale civil structures including tall and super-tall buildings, large span roof structures and sports stadia, long span bridges, special structures and airports.

Our engineers provide a wealth of experience in minimising design risk and supporting design optimisation, including: site specific wind climate assessment; dynamic response and loading analysis; wind microclimate assessment including Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA); façade loading and wind induced noise investigations.

As an advocate of, and keen supporter for, promoting STEM subjects to young adults, we were delighted to be invited to work with the students at Three Rivers Academy to help them gain a basic understanding of wind engineering in car design. We wish them luck in the competition.