The World Steel Association (worldsteel) has announced the regional champions of the 7th steeluniversity Challenge.

The regional championship took place on 13 and 21 November 2012 over two 24 hour periods. This year’s competition attracted more than 42600 attempts from 1148 teams representing 37 different countries, an increase of 76% compared to 2011.

Entrants were challenged to produce the ‘structural steel’ grade of steel using the Electric Arc Furnace simulation from steeluniversity.org at the minimum overall cost to make steel plate various yellow goods machines.

The task was successfully completed by 896 teams. The lowest cost achieved at the regional championship was $259.86/tonne achieved by Hsieh Yi Huan and Chan Shih-Wei of Dragon Steel, Taiwan, closely followed by $259.86 from China Steel Taiwan. The majority of participants were around the $265-266 range.

Of the 1148 total entries, China provided the greatest number representing 40% of the total of which 70% came from Universities and the remainder from Industry. Taiwan followed at 14% of the total and India provided the third most participants at 7.4%. Overall, Universities and Industry participants were near equal in numbers at 49% and 48% respectively with Unspecified accounting for 3%. Each team could make as many attempts as they liked in the 24 hour period leading to a total of 46622 attempts.

The new regional champions in the ‘Industry’ and ‘Student’ categories will be invited to compete for the title of World Champion in Brussels in February 2013 in the presence of leaders of the global steel industry.
Two categories competed, practicing industrial and students.

Full results can be seen at http://www.steeluniversity.org/content/html/eng/default.asp?catid=282&pageid=2081272736