Teams shall be composed of a minimum of 3 (three) and a maximum of 4 (four) students regularly enrolled in the same University at application time.
Every team shall appoint its Team Leader and communicate their name.
Team Leaders will be the one and only contact point with PACE Contest organisation.
Only BSc and MSc students are eligible to join a team. PhD candidates are excluded.
Teams’ composition shall not change throughout the duration of the competition. Therefore, no team member substitution will be accepted after the finalisation of the application procedure.
Any team member can withdraw their membership from a team but should the number of active team members fall below 3 (three), the team will be decommissioned.
A maximum number of fifteen (15) participating teams is established.
Two regions in northern Italy (Lombardia and Veneto) will host the Winter Olympic games in 2026.
The sites involved in this event are illustrated in the picture above.
Among the different airports involved in the event, consider the following:
It is expected that most of the foreign athletes will arrive in Italy landing either at Milano Malpensa (LIMC) or at Venezia Tessera (LIPZ) international airport.
These persons need to be transferred to the venues where the games will take place.
Design topic is divided in two parts. An Objective Design Topic, which sets the characteristics of the machine to be conceived by the Teams, will be complemented by a Creative Design Topic, in which Teams will show how the Aircraft designed for the Objective Design Topic could benefit from technological advancements.
Design an all-electric aircraft and size it with respect to the most demanding mission, which has been identified as LIMC to LIDI.
Benchmark the performance of the designed aircraft towards the other missions.
Table 1: Estimates for technology maturity level for electrical powertrain components
*Li-ion
**Li-S
Consider technology maturity level for electrical powertrain components foreseen for an Enter In Service (EIS) in 2050, as shown in Table 1.
Unleash your imagination and show how, potentially applying slight modifications to the aircraft you have designed for the objective topic, the technology advancements will impact as enabler of novel possibilities in terms of usage, mission, configuration, etc.
The following aspects shall be covered in the submitted objective design project.
For information on submission window opening and closing dates, please refer to Schedule.
Design Project should be sent by the Team Leader to the official address of the organization of the contest: pace-contest@euroavia.eu.
A confirmation email will be received by the team within 24h from the submission.
Teams Design Project submission shall contain the following items.
For the Objective Design Topic:
Detailed instructions on what to upload and report template will be given at proper time.
For the Creative Design Topic:
All Teams that will submit a valid proposal will be reimbursed their participation fees.
The evaluation commission will be nominated by PACE.
Its members will be selected from aircraft preliminary design experts among PACE specialist(s) and Pacelab APD professional users’ community.
A Commission observer member will be designated by EUROAVIA.
Teams’ projects will be graded by the commission with respect to the following subjects:
Teams’ projects will be evaluated by the commission with respect to the following subjects:
Overall grade will be obtained combing the two design topic grades with these weights:
PACE contest provides for prizes for the three shortlisted teams as well as additional prizes for the winning team.
In addition to what mentioned above, for the winning team:
For information on application window opening and closing dates, please refer to Schedule.
Teams will be accepted applying a first-come, first-served policy.
Additionally, variety of participating universities will be privileged, so the available places will first be assigned to the first applying team of every university. Should any place remain available, it will be granted to the second team(s) from and already accepted university(ies), and so forth.
Teams will be notified whether they have been accepted by means of an email sent to the Team Leader.
The participation fee amount for every team shall be calculated taking in consideration the number of team members and their affiliation to EUROAVIA according to the following scheme:
The amount will shall be paid by the Team Leader for the whole team.
Important remarks:
Participation fee is due by every accepted Team within 72 hours from acceptance notification. Failure to obey this deadline will cause the Team to be excluded from the contest.
All details about the payment method will be provided in the acceptance notification email.
*The present regulation may be subject to amendments, that will be promptly notified to all participants
Every team member will receive a license that will unlock a fully featured version of Pacelab APD.
Such license will be time-limited to the end of the concluding event.
By applying to the Contest, team members commit to a fair usage of the Pacelab APD software.
Fair usage implies that Pacelab APD shall exclusively be used for developing the design project for PACE contest. Any other use, including but not limited to use for any other academic purposes, in third party contracts, in research activities, is considered to be NOT fair.
All IP developed by teams within the competition will sole be property of PACE.
Should any patent be deposited, authors contribution will be rewarded recognising them as inventors with no further remuneration.
Should any part of the teams’ projects be included in any of the PACE products, authors names will be explicitly recognised within the software accompanying documentation.
