Get on Board Day
UA has this thing every year called get on board day, and it's where all of these clubs crowd the quad and display their qualities or projects in order to try and get people to join.
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I ended up walking all over the quad, but there weren't many clubs that really interested me. Majority of them were not engineering related, and even fewer were aerospace related.
I roamed around, got numerous contact cards, but nothing really stuck out until I saw this giant canoe built out of concrete.
I was later told that specific boat was actually a third of the density of the very concrete that we were standing on, and I was immediately fascinated.
I helped build the canoe, mix and test out different concrete composites, and later attended the American Society of Civil Engineers Gulf Coast Symposium in Auburn, AL.
Construction
Here's a model to represent the process we used for building the canoe.
We initially built the frame out of wood in order to ensure that it would be sturdy enough structurally while we put wet concrete on it.
From there, we simply layered concrete on top, put down layers of a certain type of mesh, and then put even more layers of concrete on top of that.
Other Competitions
While in Auburn for the concrete canoe competition, we participated in numerous other competitions as well. Me being the 'aerospace guy' of the group, I was of course elected to compete in the hydraulics competition and the mystery competition.
These competitions, along with concrete canoe and steel bridge, were all taken into consideration for the overall results.
Hyrdaulics Competition
Hydraulics wasn't too bad, it was a challenge where we had to layer sand in a PVC flume in such a way that water flowing in the flume would carry away as little sand as possible. In addition to this, we had to take measurements of the outlet diameter, the initial water height, etc.
I walked in without a pencil or calculator, and ended up having to scramble to try and get those beforehand.
The question was about the coefficient of discharge, which I actually had not encountered in my fluid mechanics course. I ended up asking for an equation sheet, got a big ol' equation packet, found an equation with all the values that we recorded, and solved for the coefficient in the equation.
The next day, one of the judges recognized me by face, and congratulated me. He told me my solution was 'exact,' and that we placed in second place.
Mystery Competition
The thing about the mystery competition was that what we were doing was a mystery. Big shocker, I know.
It ended up being a contest for manuevering objects tied to a string using a mini excavator. Of course I'd never had experience with any kind of machinery even remotely related to this, but luckily my partners had.
The biggest challenge with this task was that the object was on a string, and so any movement would cause the object to oscillate.
The score was dependent on the time it took for all three partners to complete their task. The tasks were as follows:
- fitting the triangle into a triangle shaped hole (I did this one)
- fitting a tennis ball in three various shaped PVC tubes, and then balancing it on top of the traffic cone
- balancing tires in between bricks using a ruler taped to the edge of the claw
We ended up placing first, and we even got these cowboy hat shaped hard hats as seen in the picture.
Overall Results
As a team we overall placed third, and for the canoe competition we placed third as well.
We placed second in the hydraulics competition, and first in the mystery competition.
The entire outcome of the competition can be found here.