Two teams from INRTU have reached the semifinals of the CASE IN International Metallurgy Engineering Championship
Alexander Kononov, Vice-Rector for Research at INRTU, addressed the participants and organisers of the anniversary tournament:
«CASE IN gives you the opportunity to take part in serious teamwork and offer innovative, unconventional solutions. The experience you gain from the competition will be useful in your future life at school or in the workplace.
Be successful, expand your boundaries! The university administration wishes good luck to the participants and thanks the organisers of the international project.»
RUSAL, the largest aluminium producer, was a strategic partner of the championship in the field of metallurgy. The Polytechnic students' solutions were judged by representatives of Irkutsk Aluminium Smelter Vladimir Sergeev and Anna Kulikova. The jury was also made up of Nina Nemchinova, Head of the Department of Non-Ferrous Metals Metallurgy at the INRTU, associate professors Andrey Tyutrin and Sergey Belsky.
Within 10 days the students of different courses of the Non-ferrous Metals Metallurgy Department were offered to solve the cases of implementation of information technologies in production.
According to the results of the qualifying stage, the Dragon tamers team consisting of Tatiana Budko, Dmitry Tsybenov, Vladislav Yakovets and Ivan Dranishnikov became the winners.
According to team captain Tatiana Budko, the students came up with three solutions at once: «Currently, the Irkutsk aluminium smelter uses forklifts that run on diesel fuel. By using electric vehicles and electric delivery trucks, the company will reduce the amount of exhaust gases and relieve employees from time-consuming work.»
The students also initiated the construction of a pneumatic postal unit at the company, which is a station for receiving and shipping laboratory samples.
The competition experts praised the idea of the polytechnic students to upgrade the crane girder. The project will extend the service life of crane wheels, will eliminate the deviation of cranes from the track.
The second place at the university stage went to the Iron Knights team. Ivan Orlov, Anna Bukharina and Ivan Chizhik presented a project related to the improvement of pneumatic piston sensors.
Teams Dragon tamers and Iron Knights will compete in the semi-finals of the CASE IN International Championship. The polytechnics will be opposed by competitors from universities in the Siberian Federal District.
Summing up the results of the qualifying tournament, Nina Nemchinova stressed that the participants faced a difficult task, but the boys successfully managed, demonstrating a high level of training: «Aluminium production is a labour-intensive activity in which many processes cannot be digitised.
In addition, some of the tournament participants have not had time to do an internship yet, so we have formed teams of students from different courses. The experts gave a good feedback. Representatives of IrkAz invited our students for an excursion to the plant’s workshops».
CASE IN is a part of the «Russia — Land of Opportunities» presidential platform. The project is focused on supporting promising students, creating a talent pool, and popularising engineering and technical education. More than 140 universities and over 170 major companies of the Russian Federation are partners of the championship.
