2022 Industrial Design Outstanding Award Winner, Olivia Dalla-Zuanna
Crush Cubes
Olivia Dalla-Zuanna
“Crush Cubes” is a modular compact crumple zone system that replaces a go-karts existing fairings, with embedded blocks of various patterns specifically designed to absorb impact energy and mitigate driver shock and injuries.
Congratulations Olivia on an Outstanding Design Award!
Supervisor | Andrew Louey
“My honours project looked into the “Prevention of Injury in Go-Karting”, specifically focussing on the lack of high impact protection within the karts themselves.
Competitive go-karting is a field that I have been involved in and passionate about for quite some time, so when it came to picking an honours project, it was definitely a field I was interested in pursuing. My project began looking into solutions for other types of karting crashes such as rolls or flips, but when I dove deeper into the field, issues concerning the lack of high impact testing and protection became prevalent.
The solution “Crush Cubes” was therefore designed in response to the problem, providing higher impact protection for karting drivers. The system is essentially a compact crumple zone, which allows for the absorption of large amounts of energy within the limited space of a go-kart. The system was created to be modular and functionally graded, allowing for the changing of select blocks, and the optimisation of energy absorption. The aim of Crush Cubes was to not only protect go-kart drivers from injury, but to also set higher standards for safety and promote the design of future safety interventions in motorsport.”
