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Competition Results
TCNJ took home third place from the ASCE Metropolitan region competition!!
Final Steps
Our team is finalizing our presentation for the oral section of the competition which will take place Friday at NJIT. Our physical race will be held in Denville this Saturday. We have finalized everything for our display table including our poster to present at the competition on “How to make a concrete canoe”. This week we have created a 3 foot cross section of the canoe to show our construction process and the different layers of the canoe.
Final Steps
Our competition is about two weeks away! Our team has created a stand for the canoe to be place on. Once the stand was built, we could remove the canoe from the mold. Our canoe was successfully removed from our mold! We created one last concrete mix and touched up some patches and smoothed the edges of the canoe. We are currently creating a display for the canoe and posters to explain our design and building process at the competition.
ASCE Competition
The past few weeks our team has been getting everything together for the ASCE competition in May. Our team has submitted our finalized engineering notebook and engineering design report to the ASCE board. The engineering notebook contained pictures and descriptions about the fabrication process. It includes extensive step by step process of the construction
Curing Process
Our Canoe just finished the 28-day curing process. Once the canoe was completed, the curing process started that night. In order to cure the concrete, burlap sacks were soaked and wrapped around the canoe. A piece of plastic was placed over the burlap sacks to keep the moisture in. In order to ensure the canoe maintained moisture, the burlap sacks were soaked every day. Curing is an important process because it increases the strength and durability of the concrete.
Construction Proccess
The construction of our mold for the canoe began as soon as we all arrived back from winter break. The cross sections were cut in the woodshop and to connect them, we used decorative paneling. The tips of the canoe were created by shaving a block Styrofoam into the correct shape. Once the mold was complete, our team spent 10 hours in the lab, mixing and spraying the canoe with the concrete. Pictures of the construction process can be found in the gallery.
Winter Break Update:
Over winter break, we finalized our concrete mixture. We first narrowed our mix design down to five different mixes. The compressive strength of each mix was tested. We then choose our final design based on the workability and compressive strength of each mix. Our canoe dimensions were uploaded from MaxSurf to AutoCad. From AutoCad we were able to take section cuts along the length of the boat in order to create a mold for the canoe. Once we got back from break, we were ready to start making the mold.
Mix Design Update
Research was conducted on the materials the ASCE Concrete Canoe Rules and Regulations allow each team to use for their mix design. After capital and material fundraising, it was concluded that Portland Cement Type I and Silica Fume would be used as our cementitious materials, Poraver (0.5-1.0mm) and LS300 Cenospheres would be used as our aggregates, and Sikament 686 and Sika Air (air entrainer) would be used as our admixtures. Our goal was to create ten applicable mix designs that would be strength oriented, yet lightweight. To ensure these qualities were maintained, the density of the mix must be between 60.4-64.4 lbs/ft3. Ten mix designs were created with the specified density on a mix design excel spreadsheet. The materials are in the process of being donated to our team so testing and mixing our designs can be completed.
Hull Update
Our hull design has made a lot of progress in the past couple of weeks. The hull is being designed in the program Maxsurf. We are finalizing the dimensions of the canoe this week. We started with one main asymmetrical design in Maxsurf and manipulate the length and beam for alternative designs. We are testing our canoe designs with three different lengths and three different beams. The dimensions are tested in Maxsurf’s resistance software. The resistance software outputs a resistance vs. speed graph and our canoe dimensions will be selected by the end of the week based on the graph with the lowest resistance.