The races showcase who has the fastest canoe and the best paddlers. There are five total races. The sprint is a two-person 100m event with a turn at the halfway point. The endurance race is another two person event that includes slaloms and a few long straightaways. The sprint and endurances races have separate male and female races. The Co-Ed race is a four person event with two men and two women and the team completes the sprint course.
The design paper sums up your entire project. Everything from scheduling, to your mix, and construction process are included and it must be structured perfectly for you to achieve the maximum amount of points.
A five minute presentation of your project structure, canoe design, and topics in your design paper is given in a professional manner. Questions are then asked by the judges afterwards and vary greatly, but anything mentioned in your design paper is fair game.
The final product includes your canoe’s appearance, the display table, and the stands. The display table has a copy of your design paper and engineer’s notebook. The presentation and notebook must follow all rules and regulations closely.
Joining the Concrete Canoe team gives you an opportunity to join a civil engineering competition to use the skills you learn inside class as well as learn skills you would only gain from being part of a team. With many leadership roles available to dedicated team members, we are always looking to give new members responsibility and pass down knowledge. There are so many aspects of the project that there is bound to be something to grab your interest, and we need a dedicated team to be successful in each part.
Every year, we are always looking for eager students who would like join the paddling crew. We will be holding tryouts early in the year and picking the team after evaluating everyone’s ability. Come out to learn how to race a canoe on the Colorado River and see how much fun it is for yourself!
Everything from the canoe to the stands must be constructed by the team. We have "build" days all throughout the school year to complete this part of the project. Learn how to use various shop tools and help make our final display amazing.
Before the canoe can compete we make sure that all loads and stresses that the rigors of competition brings can be handled by the canoe. The team utilizes various software packages to run calculations and analyses to keep us within our factor of safety.
Our concrete floats on its own! The utilization of light-weight aggregates and admixtures to produce a light-weight, strong, and workable concrete is one of the main engineering obstacles that the team has to overcome. Learn about concrete properties and how to test your own cylinders.
The design of the canoe’s hull plays a key role in the speed and manuevarbility during competition. Ensuring a hydrodynamic design is done by researching and understanding canoe designs as well utilizing CAD programs.
The costs of being competitive at the regional and national competition add up between concrete mix testing, canoe mold construction, paddler training, display construction, canoe construction, and travel and registration expenses. This is why we are grateful for any form of help or donation you have to offer – every contribution helps us fund a vital part of what makes our product great and competitive. For any questions about the competition or donations, please contact us using the button below.
One of the corporate benefits of supporting our competition teams includes recognizing our supporters on our ASCE platforms, giving as much exposure to the engineering students at here at UT as we can.
If you would like to make a donation online, please click the Donate button below to make a contribution. ***NOTE: Make sure the text box in the bottom right corner states the following “American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Account: 30-2116- 8093 (Donation: COMPANY NAME)” Competition Team: (Concrete Canoe) ***
ECJ 2.208
301 E Dean Keeton St, Austin, TX
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