Engineering students create concrete canoe for March competition
Janel Shoun-Smith |
Civil engineering students casting their first concrete canoe on Saturday, Jan. 31. Nashville's Channel 4 came by to check out the project.
Project provides real-world experience for civil engineering seniors
See WSMV Channel 4's story on the Lipscomb engineering students concrete canoe.
This Saturday, students in Lipscomb University’s Raymond B. Jones College of Engineering will be creating their own canoe—made out of concrete!
The engineering students will compete in their first concrete canoe competition this coming March. Saturday, beginning at 10 a.m., as many as 20 students will be working to pour the concrete to cast the canoe.
The casting will take place inside and outside of the Hughes Center, Room 201, on the building’s main level. Hughes Center is best accessible from the north campus entrance off Belmont Boulevard.
As a project of the civil engineering department, five civil engineering majors are overseeing the design and creation of the 18-foot long canoe that will hold up to four people (650 pounds), while weighing about 700 pounds itself, said Michaela Kirk, a civil engineering senior from Nashville who is serving as one of the project managers along with Aaron Carter, also a civil engineering senior.
The core team of students – Kirk, Carter, Kyle Neal, Matthew Hull and Ryan Gadsey – have been working since August researching designs, talking to other universities who have previously participated in the competition, testing materials and figuring out a budget for the whole project. The students had to consider the strength needed, the right dimensions for it to float and be stable, the weight of the canoe and many other factors.
“I want to go into project management, so this firsthand experience is perfect for me,” said Kirk, “Working out people’s schedules and working within a budget are all skills I will need.
“Likewise, Kyle hopes to pursue a graduate degree in structural design, so he was in charge of the structural components, making sure the thickness of the canoe is able to withstand the forces applied to it,” Kirk said. “Matt previously interned with TTL, a local engineering firm, and the majority of the work he did there was concrete testing. So he was assigned the task of creating a concrete mix that would work given the parameters stated in the rules. Ryan focused on designing the hull of the canoe. The project was perfect for all our skills.”
The work becomes a reality on Saturday when students will mix concrete, slowly applying it to the mold for the canoe one layer at a time and adding reinforcements. The whole process could take 10 to 12 hours, said Kirk.
The students decided to use a concrete with a mix of small glass beads and acrylic mixed in with sand and cement to make the canoe lighter, Kirk said. The canoe may not be the fastest and the lightest out on the lake, but it will be one of the most stable, she said.
“This competition gives students a chance to take a fairly complicated project all the way from concept to completion, and there are not really that many opportunities for that in an academic setting,” said Joe Morgan, chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “All along the way there are guidelines and rules and codes, so it is very similar to an actual design or construction project, just on a smaller scale.”
They will be competing in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ regional Concrete Canoe competition, held at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, March 19-21. Canoes are judged in four categories: presentation, theme, design report and the races. Four races are held, two sprints and two endurance races.
The concrete canoe project provides a long-term, real-world experience for these civil engineering students who all plan to graduate and hit the job market in May.