Mechanical Engineering Brother Duo Triumph in Prestigious Design Engineering Competitions  

Published: 23 Aug, 2022

Brothers Eoin Oude Essink and Tadhg-Lorcan Oude Essink have won the prestigious nTopology Responsible Part Challenge 2022 and were semi-finalists in the ASME Heat Sink Challenge 2022, representing TU Dublin and Trinity College Dublin, respectively.

Eoin is a PhD candidate at TU Dublin’s School of Mechanical and Design Engineering. He is investigating Data Centre cooling technologies as part of the MaREI (SFI Research Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine research and innovation) under the ERBE CDT programme. He is supervised by Dr Sajad Alimohammadi from TU Dublin, Dr Tim Persoons from Trinity College Dublin and Xiangjie Chen from Loughborough University. Eoin is also an alumnus of the School of Mechanical, Manufacturing and Biomedical Engineering at Trinity College Dublin, graduating with a master’s in 2019.  

Tadhg is a Junior Sophister Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering student, part of the Mechanical, Manufacturing and Biomedical Engineering department at Trinity College Dublin. During his time at Trinity, Tadhg has been part of the Formula Trinity team, where for the past 12 months, he has been the Head of Engineering. Next year, he will participate in the Unitech International Programme, undertaking an academic exchange at RWTH Aachen and an industrial placement with a Unitech Corporate partner.  

nTopology-EOS 2022 Responsible Part Challenge 

nTopology tasked students from across the globe with presenting projects they had worked on which demonstrated responsible additive manufacturing methods. A panel of industry experts from nTopology, EOS, and Lockheed Martin evaluated the projects on their level of innovation, use of nTopology’s software, potential impact, and manufacturability.  

Additive manufacturing is a relatively new process compared to traditional methods, and it is becoming more prominent in the automotive, aerospace, and medical sectors. The technology enables previously impossible designs, resulting in new creative designs further maximising performance engineering solutions. nTopology is a CAD software package using state-of-the-art topology optimisation algorithms to allow engineers to create additively manufactured parts without compromising performance. 

ASME Heat Sink Challenge 2022. 

The project submitted by the duo was an additively manufactured aluminium heatsink, which had previously been entered into the ASME Heat Sink Challenge 2022. Their design was manufactured by competition sponsor GE and showcased during the ITherm 2022 conference in San Diego, where they finished as semi-finalists. Eoin and Tadhg applied their learnings from the competition to improve their heatsinks thermal performance while further maximising the potential of additive manufacturing.  

The ASME Heat Sink Challenge tasked undergraduate and postgraduate students worldwide with a real-world engineering problem by creating an additively manufactured aluminium heatsink. The design had to cool an asymmetric heat load while considering limiting factors such as size constraints, material, and manufacturability.  

The designs created by students were justified by submitting a white paper that demonstrated the reasoning and numerical validation of their heat sinks. Next, the white papers were reviewed by a panel of industry and academic experts, after which an independent 3rd party numerically validated the designs. Finally, the top designs selected by the panel were printed by GE and assessed experimentally at a state-of-the-art facility at the University of Utah. Designs that passed these phases were showcased at ITherm 2022. 

Eoin travelled to San Diego to represent the team at ITherm and present part of his research on a Numerical Investigation of Adjustable Air Amplifiers as an Alternative to Fans in Data Centre Servers.  

Eoin and Tadhg-Lorcan would like to thank Dr Sajad Alimohammadi from TU Dublin, Dr Tim Persoons from Trinity College Dublin, and Mark Hartnett from Irish Manufacturing Research for their advice and guidance on the projects.