News Archive

Four EMS engineering students have recently returned from Taiwan where they competed in the 2019 IDEERS (Introducing and Demonstrating Earthquake Engineering Research in Schools) competition. Cameron Hind, Timothy Masters, Sahaj Parajuli and Samuel Minchin, along with their supervisor Dr Yimiao Huang, progressed through to the final after winning the pre-competition held on Open Day 2019.

The IDEERS competition is held annually and features 50 teams from all over the world competing over two days to construct a model that should be able to withstand a simulated earthquake. The theme of this year’s competition was “Making a tower structure with a single load platform”. On the first day of competition each team constructs their model, with the second day dedicated to testing at the National Centre for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE).

While the result of the competition didn’t go exactly the way the team had hoped, the experience was extremely valuable to the students.

Team leader Tim Masters reflected on the trip when he returned to Australia; “Traveling to Taiwan was a valuable experience for the whole team. We learned to work together to make a design become reality, bringing together unique insights from each team member into the mix.”

“It was a real eye-opener seeing how much society in Taiwan has been influenced by earthquakes. Coming from Australia where we don't usually worry about earthquakes I certainly learnt a lot, and it was really cool.” said team member Sam Minchin.

Dr Huang has no doubt that another team will head to the IDEERS 2020 competition, proudly representing UWA.

Media references

Ben Robson (UWA Faculty of Engineering Mathematical Sciences) (+61 8) 6488 7501