Description

Students take on the role of an architectural practice and are presented with a full-scale mock-up of a portion of the external façade of a housing estate. They must first identify possible ways of enhancing the visual environment of the estate and the energy performance of the external envelope of the building. Working in teams, students would then develop their designs, procure materials, fabricate façade elements and finally carry out the installation.

Description

Over several weeks, students respond to a number of mini briefs in which they learn about different structural concepts. This Big Rig event is intended to be the culmination of the project, in which they get to put into practice the concepts that they have been learning about. Teams of students, acting as structural engineers, are commissioned to develop and test a design for a new footbridge. Their test specimens must span the gap between two single-storey Big Rig structures. Here, added excitement and jeopardy is added to the activity from the scale of the testing environment, so the test specimens must be large, and when they ultimately fail, the result will be spectacular. Students learn from how their bridge behaves under testing and from improving their design.

Description

Teams of students are asked to create a room in the middle of a Big Rig structure, and to supply it with all the necessary life-support systems and creature comforts: light, heat, water, sanitation and electricity.

This project is an opportunity to explore:

• The construction materials used to create the fabric of a modern dwelling.
• How alternative materials can be used to reduce the carbon footprint or embodied energy of the building.
• How services are supplied to buildings.
• How traditional sources of energy and water can be replaced with low-carbon systems, such as rainwater harvesting, solar PVs and biomass boilers.
• How considerations such as light and wind direction might influence building design.
• How different parts of a design team interact to create a building.

Description

At this Big Rig event engineering students take on the role of contractors responsible for the fit out of a new nuclear power station. Given a set of drawings and a kit of components, their challenge is to find a way to safely assemble and commission a mock up of a primary coolant loop of a pressurised water reactor. As part of their brief they must design a control and instrumentation system for the rig and develop a testing programme for their system.

The event is designed to be carried out by a mixed team of graduate and undergraduate engineers and apprentices from a range of disciplines: mechanical, electrical, nuclear and power engineering.

Description

This event is designed to give students a flavour of the opportunities that a career in the nuclear industry offers and is hosted by Lakes College and Sellafield Ltd. A team of 20 engineering students are set the challenge of constructing, commissioning and operating a mock up of a liquid evaporator unit. As well as taking on this technical challenge students experience first hand the benefits of living a stone’s throw from the Lake District by taking part in an outdoor adventure weekend before they start on the Big Rig.

This Big Rig event is designed to be carried out by a team of undergraduate engineers from a range of disciplines: mechanical, electrical, nuclear and power engineering.

Description

Students are set the challenge of building a waste water treatment works that will enable a tank full of waste water to be discharged into a local river. They are given a large set of components – such as tanks, pipes, gutters, pumps, sand, filters – and set the task of arranging these components in such a way as to allow the water to be cleaned. This is more of an exercise in trial-and-error rather than careful design. What they will effectively be creating is their own waste treatment works, albeit without the biological digestion reactors. A sense of jeopardy is added by using mocked up foul water, and the provision of a mocked-up clean river into which they must ultimately discharge this water.