The 2021 “Guangwei Cup” Scientific and Technological Innovation Competition of Chinese Association for Composite Materials came to a successful end the other day. Supervised by Professor Chen Liming of the School of Aerospace Engineering of Chongqing University, the CQU delegation made up of members including postgraduate students Zhao Wanqi, and Wang Jingzhe and undergraduate students Li Jiayu, Wu Bowen and Li Xueshun participated in the Competition with their research project “design and mechanical properties of I-shaped thin-walled structure and its omni-directional self-locking system” and claimed the national first prize. This is the first time that a CQU delegation has won the national first prize in this event.

A total of 296 college and university delegations signed up for the regional preliminaries of the Competition and 133 delegations made it to the semi-final. After selection, 31 delegations from Chongqing University, Tsinghua University, Nanjing University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Tongji University, Northwestern Polytechnical University and National University of Defense Technology reached the final. Eventually, the CQU delegation claimed the national first prize as the runner-up in terms of total scores (special prize winner and 2 first prize winners were selected).

Participating delegations were asked to choose a topic related to frontier scientific and technological field of composite materials. The scope of topics included composite manufacturing process and equipment, and composite structure design and application. In the final, the participating teams were asked to make an oral defense and the review experts conducted comprehensive evaluation taking into consideration the achievement level, completion quality and defense, and the winners were selected according to the ranking of the final score.

Based on the actual application conditions, the CQU delegation put forward an I-shaped thin-walled structure which can be used for omni-directional self-locking of the system after analysis of the existing research findings. The participants designed and optimized the configuration based on the super folding theory, and obtained a multi-stage flat I-shaped thin-walled structure with boss structure design by combining the experiment, theory and simulation. Structure has better performance in energy absorption compared with the configuration of published research, without compromising the omni-directional self-locking function of the system. In the final, the two defending team members achieved gratifying results with their outstanding completion of topic selection and impressive performance.

The “Guangwei Cup” Scientific and Technological Innovation Competition has been held for 6 straight years from 2016 to 2021, with participants from more than 100 colleges and universities across China. It has become a scientific innovation competition for college students with considerable influence. The event of 2021 was sponsored by Chinese Society for Composite Materials, China Research Institute for Science Popularization, Weihai Science and Technology Bureau, and Weihai Torch Hi-tech Science Park and organized by Weihai Guangwei Composite Materials Co., Ltd.

The School of Aerospace Engineering has always been attaching great importance to talent nurturing. At the event, CQU students exhibited their remarkable expertise in mechanics and broad professional horizon, and set an inspiring example for other students. The School of Aerospace Engineering will concentrate efforts in nurturing more top innovative talents in mechanics to meet the needs of the era by further optimizing the talent nurturing system and expediting disciplinary construction and development.