Concrete Canoe

During my time as an undergraduate at Clarkson University…

I spent many of my nights and weekends working with the Concrete Canoe Team. This was part of an annual competition put on by the American Society of Civil Engineers to design, build, present and race a sea-worthy craft made from what is typically considered to be one of the most brittle and dense building materials. Each year in September, a new set of rules is released containing constraints on the concrete mix design (e.g. what percentage of the aggregate materials must be recycled) to the dimensions and curvature of the hull. Beyond that, the teams are on their own to conduct experiments on new concrete mixtures, build and test designs for both strength and fluid drag, to develop new construction techniques, and finally to build a full scale canoe, which was typically 6 meters in length and 90 kilograms in mass. For the 2007-2008 season, I had the honor of serving as the team’s Captain. This position came with the responsibility of setting the team goals for the year, making executive decisions on aspects of the design and ensuring that the entire project ran on schedule and on budget. During my tenure as captain, I initiated an innovative convex hull design, developed a technique for stitching together fiberglass reinforcement into three dimensional shapes, and designed an automated climate-controlled (temperature and humidity) curing tent to prolong the curing process, which strengthens the concrete. These changes helped the team improve their performance by two places over the previous year in the regional competition.