2023.12.25（Mon）

Awards and Commendations

Students in Takahashi/Wan Laboratory won the first prize in the newly established category R (recycled carbon fiber) of the “2023 IHI/SAMPE Japan Student Bridge Contest”!

• Name, Faculty/Graduate School, Department (Stream / Program) / Major: Department of Systems Innovation, School of Engineering, Fan Zhang (M2), Shingo Miyamoto (M2), Peng Lu (M1), Ryo Miyamoto (B4), Keisuke Naito (B4)

• Name of the award and a short explanation about the award: Student TheSAMPE (The Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering) Student Bridge Contest is an annual student competition (about 100 teams) for lightweight bridges made of fiber-reinforced composite materials. This report is from the Japan preliminary round (21 teams participated) in the Recycled Carbon Fiber category (Category R).

• About awarded research:
  In the bridge contest, bridges made of fiber-reinforced composites designed and manufactured by student teams from various universities will be evaluated by a three-point bending test, and the lightest bridge that exceeds the specified load will be declared the winner. The Recycled Carbon Fiber Category (Category R) was newly established in light of the recent trend toward circularity, and only requires the use of recycled carbon fiber non-woven fabrics provided by SAMPE Japan and the maximum external dimensions of the bridge, with no specification on resin or molding method.

• Awardee's impression & future plan:
  We are very honored to receive this award. We would like to express our deepest gratitude to everyone in our laboratory who provided us with various kinds of support in receiving this award. Even though we used recycled carbon fiber for the first time, we were able to obtain better results than expected. We hope that next year we will be able to take full advantage of the material's performance and produce even lighter and better bridges.