The annual Lockheed Martin Engineering Week Challenge gave AE students a taste of the real world

Lockheed Martin engineer Javier Jimenez talking with one of the AE students during the Lockheed Martin ChallengeFrom Tech to Task. Georgia Tech alumnus Javier Jimenez, right, now the deputy chief engineer at Lockheed Martin, took time to explain some of the ins and outs of his work during the 2019 Lockheed Martin Challenge, February 19.

In what has become a treasured "Engineering Week" tradition of the Daniel Guggenheim School, representatives from Lockheed Martin came to the campus on Feb. 19 to challenge more than 20 AE students with a real-world engineering problem. 

Hosted by the student chapter of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the Tuesday night pizza party quickly morphed into an intense idea incubator, as five teams competed to deliver the best response to Lockheed's scenario. After a little more than an hour, they were asked to present their findings.

"Overall, we were impressed by the technical ability of all of the teams, but the winning team’s answer stood out in the end because of the details they tackled," said Lockheed Martin stress engineer, Andrew DiSalle (BSAE '16).

Here's the problem they were given:

An oil tanker crashed off the coast of Massachusetts with the potential to cause millions of dollars in environmental damage. One coast guard HC-130H is immediately available to airlift supplies vital to the cleanup efforts, but the aircraft has had a recent history of engine problems that could potentially lead to the aircraft going down over the ocean or failing to take off, risking destruction of the aircraft and cleanup equipment as well as the safety of the pilots. Given limited data on the cause of the problems and limited time to analyze the problem, the students were asked to come up with a justification as to whether or not they would send the aircraft.

Fourth-year AE undergrad Savas Mavridis said the scenario presented some classic challenges that all student engineers need to consider.

Savas Mavridis
Savas Mavridis
GT-AIAA President

"This case-study was modeled after the same decision-making matrix that came into play for the Challenger, where the person who'd predicted the failure wasn't listened to," said Mavridis.

"All of us, as students, always thought that we'd never make that same mistake, a mistake that put human lives in danger. But, as we weighed all of the variables against the pressure to launch in this case study, we found ourselves favoring launch. The team that won the challenge, well they won because they took the pilot's safety into consideration."

DiSalle and his colleague MRB engineer Ryan Burke, (BSAE '16) agreed with Mavridis's overall assessment. 

"We were presented with a number of impressive justifications that were statistically based to determine the cost of sending the aircraft and it failing versus the cost of not sending it at all," said DiSalle. 

"However, many of the groups got caught up in the high dollar amounts and failed to also directly consider the safety of the pilots in their analyses. Or if they considered it, it wasn’t mentioned in their justifications. The winning team was the one team that included the safety of the pilot in their answer. They also presented an inventive technical solution by requiring the engines to run up to 100-percent power prior to taxi or takeoff to get a final test in before sending the aircraft."

For Burke, who participated in a similar challenge three years ago, the evening reminded him of why he went into engineering in the first place.

"Yeah, it's really fun to dig in and solve these problems. I remember our problem - it was about a fastener that came loose. We really dug into it. And I guess we did well enough..."

Well enough to get a job offer from Lockheed when he graduated.

AE alumnus Ryan Burke, right, explains some of the details of the Lockheed Martin Challenge to AE studentsMapping out a Solution. Ryan Burke (right), BSAE '16, now an engineer with Lockheed Martin, took time to discuss his company's approach to engineering during the Lockheed Martin Challenge.