Concrete Canoe Team Places 12th in the Nationals
A team of Michigan Tech students
finished in the top half of the 2001 National Concrete Canoe Competition,
placing twelfth in a field of 24 teams from throughout the United States.
"We did pretty well,"
said the team's captain, Travis Davidsavor. "We went up against some
big teams that make the top five in the nationals every year."
This is only the second time
MTU has gotten to the national competition, and its first time as a regional
winner. The team took first place at the American Society of Civil Engineers
(ASCE) 2001 Regional Conference, held at Michigan Tech in April. The national
competition, sponsored by ASCE and Master Builders, Inc., was held June
14-16 at San Diego State University, in California.
The teams were judged in a
variety of events, and Tech's presentation placed sixth, while its display
ranked seventh and its paper earned a tenth-place finish. "In the
races, we didn't do as well as we had hoped, but as you know the U.P.
doesn't always have open water," Davidsaver noted. "A lot of
the other teams practice in the water at 6 a.m. every day." Tech
students got to paddle in the swimming pool a couple times a week.
So how do you build a canoe
out of concrete? The team made a pattern on a computer, printed it out,
and built an inside-out version of their final product out of oriented
strandboard and cedar. After shrink-wrapping the wooden mold in plastic,
they spread a one-eighth-inch-thick layer of concrete inside the shell,
followed by a layer of fiberglass and another layer of concrete. "You
only have ten minutes to work with concrete," Davidsavor said, so
all 26 members of the team had to work very quickly.
After the canoe was unmolded
and sanded smooth, Advance Tech Body Repair of Houghton painted it, while
Koski Signs, of Hancock, lettered on its name, Aurora.
The MTU canoe was the only
one in the competition to incorporate carbon fibers into the concrete,
which minimizes an inevitability with concrete: cracking. "Our canoe
was a little heavier than some, but it didn't have any structural problems,"
Davidsavor noted.
Robert Baillod, chair of the
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and unofficial patron
saint of the group, was pleased with their performance.
"They were really good,"
he said. "Their goal was to make the top ten. They almost did, and
there's always next year."
The 2002 nationals will be
in Madison, Wisconsin, as part of the American Society of Civil Engineers
sesquicentennial. Davidsavor, who earned a BS in Civil Engineering this
year and returns to MTU as a graduate student, says he may be part of
next year's concrete canoe team, but he probably won't be at its head.
"This is a great opportunity to develop leadership skills,"
he said. "An undergraduate should have the chance."
Major funding for the MTU concrete
canoe team was provided by Gundlach Champion of Houghton, Colasanti Corporation
of Detroit, and U.P. Concrete Pipe of Escanaba. All three businesses are
involved in the concrete industry.
Professor Bogue Sandberg is
the team's advisor. Other members of the team are civil engineering undergraduates
Matt Bugbee, Josh Szymanski, Tim Martin, Matt Sturgell, Andy Erickson,
Ray Trudgeon, Casey Hulway, Nancy Wales, Lee Ahola, Melissa Shindorf,
Kriselda Cuellar, Traci Blank, Jennifer Byle, Bryan Block, Ryan Betker,
Matt Dina, Jim Kuntz, Mark Cicero, and Kari Allen; Wendy Nyuli, a civil
engineering graduate student; and Erin Sturgell, a biomedical engineering
undergrad.
(Photo is courtesy of the 2001 ASCE/MBI National Concrete Canoe Competition.)