ENGINEERING

ANSYS, a global innovator of simulation software and technologies designed to optimize product development processes, announced today that a team of engineering students from the University of Washington in Seattle, Wash., has won the fourth annual College Design Engineering Award. Sponsored by ANSYS, Inc. as part of its continuing support of engineering education, the award was made based on project scope, engineering problems encountered and solved, uniqueness of solutions, potential for commercialization and impact on the engineering community. Entries were judged by editors of Design News magazine as part of the publication's Excellence in Design Achievement Program. Funded by ANSYS, Inc., the award for the winning project is $10,000 in cash to the student team and a $10,000 scholarship grant for the school's engineering department. In receiving the award, the University of Washington students were recognized for their work in refining the design of a piezoelectric-driven micropump incorporating unique no-moving-part valves and a compact one-square-inch footprint for applications where space is limited and reliability is essential. "ANSYS is pleased to recognize the outstanding work of these students and their valuable contribution to the technical community," noted Jim Cashman, president and CEO of ANSYS, Inc. "Funding this award is an important part of our corporate initiative to support engineering education and an investment in the future of the next generation of professionals who will be the driving force of the simulation industry in the coming decades." Under the supervision of their advisor Professor Dr. Fred Forster, engineering students Adrian Gamboa, Jone Chung and Chris Morris worked on the project using engineering simulation technology. An oscillating membrane that moves fluid through the pump was modeled and analyzed with ANSYS Structural software to determine the component's deflection and resonant behavior. Pump performance was simulated with ANSYS computational fluid dynamics software coupled to the Subproblem Approximation Optimization Method included in ANSYS. Using this approach, the students were able to increase pump output threefold, thus taking the device much closer to practical applications such as high-density cooling of electronic circuitry in space vehicles as well as moving small volumes of fluids in chemical analyzers, security detection systems and medical equipment. "We, at Design News, are honored to work with ANSYS, which generously funds the College Design Engineering Award," said Paul Teague, national editor of Design News magazine. "Of the many excellent entries, the University of Washington team showed particular innovation and insight in the way they used simulation as an integral part of the design process."