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| Turner Universal and UAHuntsville unveil new concrete racing canoe A new concrete racing canoe that uses experimental technology to strengthen the weakest part of a concrete structure was unveiled today by representatives of Turner Universal and The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Turner also presented to UAHuntsville a $10,000 gift that will help send UAHuntsville's concrete canoe team to the Southeastern regional competition this weekend in Nashville and to the national finals in June in Tuscaloosa.
"How important is this gift? It is an eleven on a scale of one to ten," said Dr. Houssam Toutanji, chair of UAHuntsville's Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and the concrete canoe team's "coach." "That isn't a statistically valid answer, but there it is. It is very important in terms of morale, the ability of the students to travel and represent UAH, in terms of knowing now that they have to win the regionals because they have money left over to go to the nationals."
"This sounds like a great competition to get young engineers charged up and excited about the field," said Brian Knowles, general manager of Turner Universal's Huntsville operations. "We recruit engineers and we want to support the engineering schools, but we also see UAHuntsville as a jewel for the city. We want to support the university's growth because it makes Huntsville a better and stronger community."
The team's new boat is named "ITZ Civilized." ITZ stands for the interfacial transition zone, the part of the concrete where the cement bonds to the reinforcement or the sand, gravel or other aggregate.
"This is the weakest area of the mix and it's where we chose to focus our research," said team member Todd Watts, a graduate student in industrial and systems engineering. The team used a plastic and fiber combination to significantly strengthen the ITZ bonds.
"We have also introduced recycled aggregate and binder to the mix," Watts said. "The competition has increased its emphasis on sustainability, so cenospheres and fly ash make up more than 25 percent of our mix."
ITZ Civilized is 20 feet long and weighs about 200 pounds. In Nashville the UAHuntsville team will compete with teams from around the Southeast in events that range from a technical engineering report to several races on Percy Priest Lake.
Building throughout the Southeast since 1955 with offices in Nashville and Huntsville, Turner Universal has delivered projects (including UAHuntsville's new Shelby Center for Science and Technology) in the commercial, industrial, healthcare, food and beverage, sports, justice, educational, aviation, hotel, research and development, and amusement business sectors.
The company's range of services and in-house expertise includes planning and preconstruction, general construction, construction management, program management, design/build, design/build-finance, lean construction expertise and a variety of self-perform capabilities.
The University of Alabama in Huntsville is a research-intensive, public coeducational university accredited to award baccalaureate, master's and doctoral degrees. The university has colleges of business, engineering, liberal arts, nursing and science, and a school of graduate studies.
UAHuntsville is a Space Grant university, and has a history of cooperation with both NASA at the nearby Marshall Space Flight Center, and the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command at Redstone Arsenal. The National Space Science and Technology Center is on the UAHuntsville campus.
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