Competition without borders!

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This summer the Faculty of Civil Engineering has organized competition for Brazilian students for the second time.

„The main target in education of the students of the Science Without Borders Program is to support practice-oriented training and problem solving” – as Dr. Völgyi István the assistant professor of the Department of Structural Engineering and the coordinator of the bridge design contest summarized.

The students were offered to choose from different opportunities to succeed the requirement of the scholarship: either programs during the academic year or summer practices (or their combination). – explained Dr. Gergely L. Vigh who is the head of the English Studies at the Faculty of Civil Engineering:

  • 2 month long summer practical placements at industrial partners. In 2015 about 5-8 student has chosen this opportunity.
  • study trips during the year. The participants this year were able to visit the building of CET, the Basilica, the Chain bridge, and has been able to join a private, guided daytime sightseeing cruise where a presentation was held about the bridges of Budapest from Dr. László Dunai, who is the Dean of the Faculty of Civil Engineering. (The participation rate on these programs has reached 70%.)
  • research work at the Faculty/Department. More students has joined our research programs during the academic year and they had the opportunity to do research work connected to their studies also.
  • summer contest has been declared especially for those students who were not able to join any research program nor longer practical placements.

The summer contest has been declared in three different categories:

a)    research (Scientific Student Conference) work,

b)    bridge design contest,

c)    design contest.

In the category of research (Scientific Student Conference) work the participants had to solve unique research tasks in small groups (1-3 students in a group) in any chosen subject connected to civil engineering. 6 works has been sent to organizers.

In the bridge design contest category group of 5 students were aimed to design and construct a bridge of 1.0 or 2.0 m in length with 2,3 or 4 supports. 9 teams submitted altogether 10 bridges – as explained, one of the groups submitted 2 bridges to the contest.

In the design category group of 4-5 students executed complex design tasks connected to structural engineering.

„This year we had about 4-5 enthusiastic students who has joined the bridge design and research contests as well as the 2 month long practical placement at our industrial partners.” – explained Dr. Gergely Vigh. The head of the English Studies at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and the main organizer of the contests emphasized: „Our primary aim is to improve problem-solving skills, and widening of experiences among research works or practice-oriented training.

„The contest was outstandingly successful. The attitude, knowledge and personal achievement of participants has exceeded our expectations.” – pointed out Dr. Gergely Vigh. The students of the Science Without Borders program were successful in research (Scientific Student Conference) work as well as in design work in the 2014/2015 academic year, though most of them are BSc students only in the middle of their studies.

„In the bridge design contest 3-4 works were valuable, highly detailed and showed high energy investment”- said Dr. István Völgyi, on his opinion „though at more bridges the experiences has been highlighted. During the testing of the load bearing capacity of bridges the design or construction failures, and the weak points of the structures has been recognized.” – explained. „The openminded ones could have great experiences beyond small risk.” - underlined the assistant professor in connection with the bridge design contest of the Brazilian students which every year is held in an extremely good atmosphere beyond great interest.

„It could be felt that the challenge was commonly shared by students as well. We have received a lot of positive feedback.” – remembered Dr. Gergely Vigh who shared an interesting statistics with us: the 80 % of the 74 Brazilian students who completed their studies in 2015 participated in the competition, in which 25 teacher has been assisting with organisation and consulatancy.

Awards in bridge design category in 2015

Award

Team/Bridge name

Team members

Consultant

I.

Pindamonhangaba

Roque Rodrigo Rodrigues, Osvair Luis Cibulski Junior, Pedro Igor Bezerra Batista, Francisco Douglas Castro Costa

Dr. András Lengyel

II.

InterBridge

Jaine Couto Coelho, Sérgio Leandro Scher Dias Neto, Eduardo da Silva Ricardo, Bruno Benny Vieira Coutinho, Breno Luiz Amorim Silva

Bettina Badari

III.

Budaponte

William Baradel Lari, Francisco Chicone Neto, Bruna Paschoalino da Silva, Ricardo Furtado de Mendonça Rosa, Lívia Caiado Pedrosa

Dr. Levente Katula

Award in research (Scientific Student Conference) work category

Award

Students

Subject of study

Consultant

I.

Rodrigo Rodrigues, Douglas Castro Costa, Couto Carneiro Santos

Comparison of abrasion resistance of recycled aggregate concrete and natural aggregate concrete

Dr. Tamás Simon

II.

Osvair Luís Cibulski Junior, André do Carmo Ferreira

Influence of cement type in abrasion resistance of concrete

Dr. Tamás Simon, Dr. Rita Nemes

III.

Marília Nunes Freire Ribeiro

Estimation of permeability of soils based on the grain size distribution

Dr. András Mahler

Awards in design projects

Award

Subject of study

Students

Consultant

I.

Highway resting place

Diohn Lennon Gomes da Silva, Manoel Victor Araujo Oliveira, Thales José Gomes Corso, Paulo Henrique Miranda Mitkiewics, Luciano Campos Silva

Dr. Annamária Dudás