The School of Automotive Engineering at Swansea Institute has, for many years, offered programmes designed to develop and enhance the engineering skills of those wishing to enter the automotive and motorsport industry. These programmes include Honours degrees in Automotive Engineering, Automotive Electronics Systems, Motorsport Engineering and Motorcycle Engineering and, starting in September 2008, Motorsport Electronic Systems. All are based on the fundamental philosophy of supporting sophisticated and high level theoretical analysis with fundamental applied engineering skills development. An environment exists where students can realise their potential in an ever challenging world. The Institute is proud of its industrial partnerships and succeeds in placing graduates throughout the automotive and motorsport industry. Swansea Institute is a strong supporter of the Formula Student competition and has entered teams for the past six years. The team work and self reliance developed in the students taking part is highly valued within the School of Automotive Engineering.

The first year of the course focuses on the development of sound engineering and scientific principles with extensive opportunity for practical skills development to ensure a sound understanding of engineering practice. The Institute possesses numerous laboratory and workshop areas available to support students in this work As the students progress through the course they will develop the more sophisticated analytical skills required in industry along with proficiency in a range of industry standard software packages that includes, Fluent CFD, Unigraphics NX for 3D modeling and FEA, Ricardo Wave for 1-D engine analysis, CarSim for vehicle dynamics simulation and Mitchell WinGeo3 for suspension kinematics analysis.
In addition to undergraduate teaching, research activity being developed within the School of Automotive Engineering has

tended to focus on vehicle dynamics. A current PhD student, Mike Pugh has undertaken a study on a Tatuus Formula Renault, equipped with a Pi Research Delta data acquisition system. Pugh has developed a quasi-static lap time simulation model of the car using PiSim software as a part of his research with the main focus being the analysis of roll stiffness distribution and its effect on individual tyre loading and hence handling balance. Looking at a similar aspect of vehicle behaviour Roger Dowden the Head of School has an interest in a similar field of study but utilizing the perhaps less well known WAN 31 software for vehicle dynamics and Mitchell WinGeo3 for suspension kinematic analysis. Final year student Matt Bastin is currently involved in a detailed analysis of the kinematics and load transfer characteristics of the Tatuus using this combination of software packages.

Dr Owen Williams runs the Motorcycle degree programme, and a particular interest of Williams is the study of motorcycle dynamics. A number of final year students on the programme are undertaking a detailed analysing of the dynamic behaviour of a Ducati 998 which is instrumented with a highly specified 32 channel 2D data acquisition system to collect dynamic data used for simulation model validation. Simulation work to complement this study has been performed on a number of platforms, including the Simulink software suite by Mathworks, The ADAMS code deployed in the SDRC I-Deas suite and also within the MSC BikeSim environment.

Swansea Institute has collaborated with BARC (Pembrey) to set up the Swansea Institute Vehicle Dynamics Centre which is based at the nearby Pembrey race circuit. This facility, believed to be the first of its kind to be run by a university in the UK, opens up a range of exciting teaching and applied research possibilities for the future.