Dyson collaborates with Bath Rugby on education programme

The Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology students applied their knowledge to Bath Rugby through a partnership day.

Undergraduates from the Wiltshire-based campus met with Bath Rugby wing Will Muir to educate him on gaining an engineering edge on the pitch. Mr Muir studied engineering before pursuing a career in rugby.

Dyson has partnered with Bath Rugby since 2014 and continues to show a long-term commitment to the club, “sharing a joint focus on resilience, discipline, learning from failure and a determination to be the best while nurturing young talent”.

In collaboration with a group of Undergraduate Engineers, Dyson Institute Lecturer Javad Taghipour devised a special day diving into the mechanical engineering principles that can be applied to rugby. This included designing miniature wind turbines and using them to investigate key principles such as aerodynamics and fluid dynamics, with Mr Muir adding his on-the-pitch experience to bring these theories to life.

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Following this, a student presented their own summaries in relation to various existing research papers. This included the mechanical forces at play during a rugby tackle, predicting who would win a tackle, and how the design of a rugby ball balances aerodynamic shape with ensuring good grip for the players. Mr Muir then shared his on the pitch experiences.

With over 150 undergraduates enrolled in a four-year programme, Mr Muir’s visit gave the students at the Malmesbury campus an opportunity to apply their engineering knowledge outside of the set curriculum to topics such as elite sports.

The Bath Rugby wing said: “I think the Dyson Institute is such a unique opportunity for people to come and do the theory and lectures, and then transfer that into working with Dyson. I’d definitely have applied, whether I’d have got in or not is a different matter!

“You can spend time in training looking at what the perfect pass looks like, or the optimum angle of a tackle, but without spending time on the pitch, taking tackles and making split second decisions in the moment you can’t expect to perform at your best. You need both to succeed, and I think the same applies here in engineering too.”

First year undergraduate engineer Dhruv Bhavsar added: “What a fantastic day! It was a pleasure to meet Will Muir and gain an insight into the mechanics behind the aspects of rugby. Opportunities like this have made me time at the Dyson Institute a brilliant experience already.”

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