DCEB Team Wins in Earthquake Engineering Competition in Taiwan

12 Oct 2017

The structural model designed and fabricated by a team of 4 students from the Diploma in Civil Engineering with Business (DCEB) course won the Best Structural (Engineering) Design Prize, Certificate of Excellent for Efficiency Ratio and Certificate of Quake- Resistant in the "Introducing and Demonstrating Earthquake Engineering Research in Schools” (IDEERS) competition held from 22-23 Sep 2017 in Taipei.  

The team comprising four Year 2 DCEB students, namely: Elias Teh Yan Heng, Lee Chee Wai, William and Koo Xian Zheng, led by Mdm Liang Mui Keow, Senior Lecturer, participated in the Undergraduate Category of the competition.  The team ranked 9th among the 49 teams from Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam and Australia.  They emerged as the best performing team from Singapore. 

IDEERS is an international competition organized by National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE), National Applied Research Laboratories (NARLabs) and British Council (BC) with the objective to promote earthquake engineering and seismic protection education and encourage students to participate in a creative scientific competition. During the competition, students were provided with materials such as boards/ strips, glues, rubber bands, papers and cotton strings to design and construct the structural models.  These models would be subject to the simulated earthquake forces generated by a shaking table. The competition also aims to generate students’ interests in the field of structural engineering and disaster mitigation.

This competition allowed students to gain real-world exposure. As one of the team member, William, put it: “It is a daunting task to compete against other universities at the international level, yet in SP we are given the best opportunities to prepare ourselves both mentally and physically to make it So Possible.”

DCEB team with the completed the structural model	The team visited the Longteng Broken Bridge as part of the site visit planned by the organiser

Elias Teh Yan Heng (third from the right) representing the team to receive the  Certificate of Excellent for Efficiency Ratio	William (second from the right) representing the team to receive the Best Structural Design Award