The SIUE Concrete Canoe Team "Play Ball" placed second overall at the 2008 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Mid-Continent Concrete Canoe Competition held April 17 to 19 in Arkansas. Because of high individual scores in multiple categories, including a first in Final Product and several first-place race finishes, ASCE invited the team to participate in the 21st Annual ASCE National Concrete Canoe Competition (NCCC) to be held in Montreal, Quebec June 19 to 21. The team is composed of Co-Captains Jennifer Titchenal and Troy Turner plus four other female and four other male civil engineering students. Following final exams, they’ll be practicing in Cougar Lake. Donations to offset travel expenses are being accepted. Please contact Mr. Brent Vaughn, the SIUE ASCE Student Chapter Advisor at bvaughn@siue.edu or 618-650-3533.
The SIUE ASCE Student Chapter again competed very successfully in the Concrete Canoe and Steel Bridge competitions at the Mid-Continent Regional Conference. This year’s competitions were held April 17-19, 2008 at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. The students competed against 10 major universities with civil engineering programs in the Midwest. Strict design and construction specifications challenged the students to meet the requirements yet allowed them to innovate where possible to enhance their success.
In the Concrete Canoe competition students designed and fabricated a 20-foot long canoe using Portland cement as the main binding agent along with lightweight aggregates and reinforcement. At the competition they were judged on their report and formal presentation skills concerning the canoe design and construction process. Then they competed in sprint and endurance races. The 2008 canoe, “Play Ball!,” weighed about 160 pounds and the hull was about one-half inch thick. The team won Second Place Overall (for the second year in a row) out of 11 teams. They won First Place for the Final Product, Men’s Final Sprints, Women’s Slalom/Endurance Race and Men’s Slalom/Endurance Race; Second Place for the Design Paper and Coed Final Sprints; Third Place for Oral Presentation; and Fifth Place for Women’s Final Sprints. The SIUE women beat the men’s time for 7 of the 9 teams that survived earlier tests to run in the slalom/endurance race. SIUE Senior Jason Dreyer won third place for his Technical Paper presentation about a finite element modeling analysis of the concrete canoe. The SIUE Concrete Canoe Team co-captains were seniors Jennifer Titchenal and Troy Turner.
The Steel Bridge competition required the students to design and fabricate a 20-foot-long bridge using only steel members and connectors. The SIUE entry, which was designed and fabricated by the students, won Fifth Place Overall out of 11 teams. They won Second Place for Display and Third Place for Construction Speed. This year’s bridge weighed 152 pounds and was constructed in a timed event in about 15 minutes. Total vertical aggregate deflection under a 2500-pound distributed load was less than two inches. Co-captains Joey Watson, Jake Gonterman and Rob Heer led the design and construction effort this year.
Mr. Brent Vaughn in the Department of Civil Engineering serves as the advisor for the SIUE ASCE Student Chapter. Drs. Brad Cross, Nader Panahshahi, and Chiang Lin, faculty in the Department of Civil Engineering, provided assistance to the students when necessary. Financial assistance was provided by the Department of Civil Engineering, the School of Engineering, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and contributions by a number of individuals and firms.
The SIUE School of Engineering’s 2007 American Society of Civil Engineers Student Chapter Concrete Canoe Team did very well recently at the Mid Continent Regional Conference at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. The team, which was competing for the fourth consecutive year, came within a few strokes of unseating University of Oklahoma to take 2nd place overall in the Concrete Canoe Competition. The SIUE team won first place in Oral Presentation and Design Paper and second place in Final Product and Paddling. Also at the regional competition, the School of Engineering’s 2007 ASCE Steel Bridge Team, competing for the thirteenth consecutive year, earned first place in the Lightness category.