Three winning teams walked away with sizable prize checks following second edition of ShipDX, a local naval engineering competition for students from the Naval Architecture Faculty in Galati, Romania.

Over the course of a few months, students engineered and designed a hull for a 30-meter fishing vessel with the main goal to minimize the ship’s forward resistance.

Not only did the participants have to design the hull using software tools and their personal knowledge, but the finalist teams had to build their own scale models and run them in the testing tank at University Dunarea de Jos Galati.

The objective of ShipDX is to develop students’ skills, according to a statement, making them feel like actual engineers, solving problems and making decisions within strict deadlines.

The second-edition of the competition was announced earlier this year with applications coming in during February.

Each team included one sophomore student, and two junior of different majors. Eleven teams were narrowed down to six finalists based on their design choice, reasoning, innovation, and the way they presented their ideas.

3D designs were then refined and sent to a CNC machine. This resulted in raw scale models that were further glued, polished and painted by the competitors.

With the models done, the final tests were done in the testing tank, with the results kept under wraps.

Finalist teams then had to present their designs in front of students, teachers, sponsors and partners.

The teams were scored on technical aspects such as compliance with project requirements and presentation format but what mattered most were the testing tank tests results.

GLO MARINE was the project initiator and main organizer, working closely with the university. Other key supporters included DAMEN, DMT Marine Equipment and AVEVA.

Results:

1st Place – 1500 € – Dao Ship : Mihaela Angela Ciuraru, Marius-Ștefan Mihai, Nichita Sava

2nd Place – 1000 € – Protoship : Cosmin Buti, Valentina Stroiu, Nicolae Bîlhac

3rd Place – 500 € – Novice Crew : Iulian Radu, Eugen Magadan, Ana Podgoreanu

For 2020, organizers plan to expand the competition outside of Romania, working with two to three other major universities in Europe.