Using 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD), basic computational fluid dynamics, and their First Year computing skills, the aerospace students had two weeks to design a race-car wing which, when entered into a computer simulation, would complete a circuit round the Highfield and Boldrewood campuses in the minimum time.

The practical use of parametric 3D CAD here gives a flavour of what’s to come later in First Year applied computing and throughout the engineering design curriculum.

The wings were 3D printed and wind tunnel tested by the student teams, enabling them to verify their computational results.