Design. Build. Race.
I am honored to have been able to lead the ambitious and motivated 2016-17 Aesthetics Team. UW Concrete Canoe was the first club I joined in college, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to incorporate my interest in design and communication into a highly technical and civil engineer focused group. With 41 years of history with the UW Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and 13 Regional victories, I am proud to represent the CEE Department and the UW Engineering community at a national level and continue to strengthen our reputation.
Design Paper
Presentation
Final Product
Races
Teams are judged on four categories, each worth 25% of competition points: design paper, presentation, final product and races. As the Aesthetics Lead, my area of responsibility is final product which oversees theme development, aesthetics design, product finishing, product stands, and product display.
Theme Development.
First Brainstorm
Second Brainstorm
My co-lead and I began brainstorming and collecting theme ideas during the 2015-16 Nationals competition and once the 2016-27 school year began, we gathered a team of four general members to help us review the 2017 ASCE NCCC Rules and Regulations handbook for any design restrictions or rule changes. The biggest and most challenging rule change this year was in our mix design. In previous years, our mix has been heavily reliant on poraver (glass beads) as our main aggregate as it is one of the lightest aggregates available (and has a lower density than water). However, this year 25% of our mix needed to be something other than poraver, which put heavy strain on our mix team as all other aggregate options have a density higher than water.
Because of this extra strain on the mix team, my goal as Aesthetics Lead was to create a clean finish to a simple design that incorporated the natural color of the concrete to maximize the time they had to develop a structural mix.
Poraver used in the 2015-16 canoe 'Edgewater'
Stalite and Flyash incorporated into the original Poraver mix for the 2016-17 canoe 'Vivace'
We were told that the incorporation of the new aggregate (stalite) and fly ash gave the concrete a brown-grey coloring. My team narrowed down 48 preliminary ideas that we had down to 8 plausible themes that incorporated the brown-grey mix.
UP
Water Lillies
Apples
IKEA
Mythbusters
Coffee
Campfire
Retro Arcade
Aesthetics Design.
From those 8, we chose coffee to be out theme for the year, inspired by its historical significance as an open hub for intellectuals to converse as well as its Seattle presence. This is when we brewed up the canoe name 'Vivace', to represent to liveliness and vivacity of the team in face of set-backs and difficulties.
Outside Design
Inside Design
The final design featured coffee bean outlays lining the sides and latte are inlays on the inside. The reason for the two different executions of design is to show that we understand concrete workability and are able to show off various placing methods. The rules stated that at least three different placing methods would be reviewed, and our three methods were our traditional inlays, a mix of placing and troweling concrete, and the newly incorporated outlays.
Inlay
Brown Concrete
Structural Concrete
White Concrete
White Concrete
White Concrete
White Concrete
FoamPiece
FoamPiece
FoamPiece
FoamPiece
Imprint
Imprint
White Concrete
Brown Concrete
Brown Concrete
Outlay
Flip Concrete
Inlays were first laid across the 19 ft mold to adjust spacing and curvature, then taped down with rolled blue tape. We chose to secure the foam this way because in previous years, teams used the adhesive already on the foam which caused staining in the concrete. This wasn't a problem for teams prior to 2015 because they could cover the stains with paint. However, after 2015, paints were banned from competition and teams needed to rely on pigmented concrete for designs.
Foam for inlays are placed on the male mold.
Aesthetic Layer/Finishing.
The biggest challenge I faced as a lead was the pressure of time. I had about 5 weeks of finishing which entailed shaving off the outer and inner structural concrete layers, replacing those layers with aesthetic layers, and then sanding and patching the canoe to resolve imperfections and to cut down drag in water.
Two layers needed to be sanded off because the weight of our canoe had come out to more than 400 lbs, more than double the weight of the previous year's and our goal was to keep the weight around 350 lbs. Sanding these layers off was difficult because the stalite aggregate we used dramatically slowed down our ability to shave off weight. Starting at 40 grit for shaving off layers, we gradually moved to a high of 800 grit on our aesthetic finish.
Final Product.
Aesthetics layer before sanding
Aesthetics layer after sanding and sealing
After countless all-nighters, we sealed our canoe, swamped it, presented it to our sponsors and were off to Bose, Idaho for Concrete Canoe Regional Conference. And can-oe believe that we placed second in final product and 10th in Nationals!
