After several months and thousands of hours of labor, it’s sink or float, and stand or fall this weekend for two student design teams in our College of Engineering.
We’re is hosting two prestigious conferences — the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Ohio Valley Student Conference April 11-12 and the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) Regional Student Steel Bridge Competition on April 13. Student teams will be entering all hosted competitions, including Concrete Canoe, Geotechnical, Surveying, Site Civil Design, Technical Paper, Balsa Wood Bridge, Concrete Frisbee and Steel Bridge.
Concrete Canoe Team
Our Concrete Canoe Team will be competing in the ASCE Ohio Valley Student Conference at Portage Lakes State Park Beach in nearby New Franklin. Competitions like this one provide civil engineering students an opportunity to gain hands-on, practical experience and leadership skills by working with concrete mix designs and project management.
VIDEO: Watch team members build their vessel
Students on the 25-member team are responsible for designing and fabricating a seaworthy canoe in the months leading up to competition day. They submit a design paper, give an oral presentation, have their product judged, and compete in a series of races, including a men and women’s 100-meter sprint and 100-meter slalom/endurance race and a co-ed 200-meter sprint.
The team’s 19-foot handmade canoe is made of a lightweight concrete mix that is less dense than water. Traditionally, a layer of flexural reinforcement divides two layers of hand placed concrete. The team puts over 2,000-person hours into a new canoe each competition year.
RELATED: Learn more about all of our Student Design Teams in the College of Engineering.
“In my five years on the team, we’ve never engineered a boat that sunk,” said team captain Zach Taylor, a fifth-year civil engineering major from Parma, Ohio. “Still, the most nerve-wracking moment is pushing it below the surface and waiting for it to come back up.”
The UA concrete canoe team feels they have a slight advantage at competition as they know the terrain well – the team has practiced paddling a former canoe at Portage Lakes all year.
Eight teams are competing this year. The top team advances to the national competition at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Fla., in June.
Canoe presentations begin at 2 p.m. today, April 11, at Quaker Station on the UA campus. Racing begins at 12:30 p.m. April 12 at the Turkeyfoot Beach and picnic area at Portage Lakes State Park. The full competition schedule is available online.
Steel Bridge Team
The American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) 2019 Student Steel Bridge Competition-Ohio Valley Regional Event will be hosted at the John S. Knight Center in Akron on Saturday, April 13.
The competition requires team members to use engineering skills for a timed build of a 20-foot long, 3-foot-six-inch wide steel bridge on-site. The bridge must meet the materials and component specification requirements set by AISC and pass a series of load tests. The team is also judged on aesthetics, construction speed, lightness, deflection of 2,500 pounds exerted on the bridge and overall performance.
The bridge constructed by our Steel Bridge Team is 20 feet long and 3 feet, 6 inches wide.
Teams are allowed to use previous bridges, but the rules have large changes in design specifications from year to year, making it difficult to reuse a bridge. This year’s final bridge will utilize a new approach to engineering for our Steel Bridge Team.
“We had a minor drawback not being able to acquire enough steel from our supplier this year,” said William Shea, a fourth-year civil engineering major from Sharpsville, Pa. “But thankfully, we were able to recycle some steel we used on last year’s steel bridge for our new bridge this year. We’re looking forward to showing off our latest bridge and going up against the other 10 regional teams in the competition.”
A large portion of the competition is timed assembly of the pre-welded bridge members. Last year the team assembled its bridge in 8.67 minutes with four people. (Check out a practice assembly video.)
Nationally, more than 200 schools participate each year to qualify for the competition. The top two teams will be invited to the National Student Steel Bridge Competition in May at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
The competition begins at 8 a.m. April 13 (UA will begin building around 9 a.m.). The full competition schedule is available online.
Media contact: Alex Knisely, 330-972-6477 or aknisely@uakron.edu.